


Time On My Hands

by lauawill



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauawill/pseuds/lauawill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voyager's crew deals with the emotional fallout of their return to the Alpha Quadrant in "Endgame."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Packing

**Time On My Hands 1**

“ **Packing”**

I've never had so much time on my hands.

I am apparently not dealing with it well.

The counselors warned me about this. They informed me – gently, of course – that Starfleet Captains tend to be very driven, goal-oriented beings.

I already knew this.

The evidence is all over my childhood bedroom, from a faded blue ribbon proclaiming First Place in the Lakeview Elementary Spelling Bee and a dusty Jackson Creek Middle School tennis trophy to Valedictorians' Diplomas from Bloomington South High School and Starfleet Academy.

This room is full of trophies, ribbons and certificates, most of them more than thirty years old.

I'm not sure what they mean anymore. I can remember what they meant to me then, of course. If I close my eyes, I can recall receiving each of them. I can see the indulgence in each presenter's smile as he or she handed me the prize, the satisfaction on my Mother's face, the pride in my Father's eyes – when he was there. He often wasn't.

It wasn't really a need for my parents' approval that made me chase those goals, those achievements. I wanted them to be proud of me, of course, especially my Father.

But that wasn't the reason I was so driven. No, if I could win the spelling bee and the tennis tournament, if I could graduate at the top of my class and take the physics prize, if I could become the youngest woman ever to make Captain, it would mean I was _good_. Really good. The best. It would mean I was _worthy_.

Of what, I can't even remember now.

And there's the irony.

Constantly chasing ribbons and trophies and certificates, constantly seeking outside validation, caused me to lose inner motivation.

Or, as the counselors put it, I've always been so focused on the next goal – the next prize, the next promotion, the next diploma – that I've never figured out what to do when all the goals are achieved.

I have an insane urge to take off my Admiral's rank and pin it up next to the spelling bee ribbon. I brought _Voyager_ home in one piece, I delivered almost all of my crew to their families, I received my promotion. This should be the pinnacle of my career. Instead, it feels like just another goal I worked hard to achieve. Another outward validation of the kind of I have _craved_ my entire life.

But I have no other goal now, and I feel... _lost_.

Lost.

Another irony.

I've been lost before, in ways that most people can't possibly imagine. I have been lost to my family, lost to Starfleet, lost to everything that ever mattered to me.

Now I am lost to myself.

 _Voyager_ is back in the Alpha Quadrant. And I don't know what to do next.

Which is why I am sitting in my childhood bedroom, staring at all these ribbons and trophies and certificates, trying to figure out what they all mean to me now.

I'm a little afraid of the answer.

We've been home for a month. The Maquis have been pardoned, the debriefings are over, the promotions have been handed out. We've all been told to take extended leave before reassignment. We've earned it, they say, and we need the time. To connect with our loved ones. To integrate ourselves into society. To find ourselves again.

I thought I would be able find myself here in Indiana, in this house, in this bedroom.

But I haven't. I've found only...trappings. Evidence of what young Kathryn Janeway did. Not who she was.

Who I am.

Who am I?

I'm really not sure anymore.

The Delta Quadrant did something to me.

Chakotay told me as much on the day he left with Seven.

“The years have taken a toll,” he said. “On all of us. On you and me.” He glanced over to where Seven was waiting with their things, standing over a pile of their bags, their lives, mingled together. Then he looked back down at me with soft, sad eyes. “Maybe someday we'll remember who we were before.”

“Maybe,” I said. “In time.”

He nodded. “Time. We have plenty of that now.”

“I suppose we do.”

He sighed and rubbed his ear, a gesture so familiar to me I can picture it as if he were sitting beside me now. “I don't know how to say goodbye to you,” he said.

“Then don't,” I replied.

He frowned at me. “Don't? What do you mean?”

“Don't say goodbye. Just...take your things and go. We'll see each other again.”

“Soon?” he asked, and even now I have to persuade myself that the sudden spark in his eyes was nothing more than a figment of my imagination.

“I don't know,” I answered. “I think I'll go home to Indiana for a while.”

“Call me when you get settled?”

“I will.”

That seemed to satisfy him. “Okay, then. Take care of yourself, Kathryn,” he said, and turned and walked away.

When he picked up two bags and I couldn't tell which was his and which was Seven's, I was forcefully reminded of the day we left New Earth, of the careful segregation of our belongings before we beamed back to _Voyager_.

I haven't called.

Neither has he.

A number of people around me, my Mother and sister among them, seem to think that by leaving the planet with a woman barely half his age he has betrayed some agreement between us.

He hasn't.

He was in love with me once. He left that in very little doubt. But that was a long time ago, before Riley Frazier and Jaffen and Kashyk and Seven. Before the years took their toll. Before the Delta Quadrant changed us. Before all the dangers and crises and disagreements turned the Kathryn and Chakotay who trusted each other from the moment they met into the Admiral and Captain who couldn't say goodbye.

There was never an agreement between us. There was never even an acknowledgment. By the end, there was barely a friendship.

I miss him. I've missed him for a long time. Years. Since long before his relationship with Seven.

I miss myself, too. Much more than I miss him.

I take a long look around the room, at the ribbons and trophies and certificates.

Then I retrieve the empty box I've brought with me. One by one, I take them all down, all the prizes that represent old goals, and put them in the box, until the walls and shelves of my old room are bare.

The room feels larger, somehow. More open and free. Brighter than it has ever been, too, with a shaft of afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows.

I stand in the middle of the room, empty now, but also filled with endless possibility.

Maybe Chakotay is right. Maybe someday I'll remember who I was before the Delta Quadrant.

Or maybe he's wrong, and soon I'll discover who I can be _after_ the Delta Quadrant.

I allow myself a small smile.

I have a new goal. I won't be able to hang the prize on the wall to fade or leave on a shelf to gather dust for the next thirty years. The prize will be my own self, awarded with pride, satisfaction and indulgence.

I'd say that's a goal worth working toward, no matter how long it takes.

Fortunately, I've never had so much time on my hands.

-END Part 1-


	2. Unpacking

**Time on My Hands 2**

“ **Unpacking”**

 

“I've never had so much time on my hands.”

The wolf looks at me with amber eyes, then looks away. She says nothing.

She's lying next to me, legs outstretched, pink tongue lolling, head pressed against my thigh. I run my hand through the gray-white fur along her belly. She's thinner than I remember, her ribs raised under my palm.

It's the first time she has appeared to me in almost three years.

I cannot remember the exact moment when she stopped coming to me in my vision quests. During the incident with Captain Ransom and the _Equinox_ , I was desperate for her counsel. She did not come to me, and I realized she hadn't for months. My vision quests without her had been useful only to a point, providing respite from a life on _Voyager_ that had become mundane in its routine, but punctuated by periods of chaos and terror.

There was no good advice to be found on those vision quests. And I could have used some good advice.

Intellectually, I know that the vision quest is a closed loop. The _akoonah_ replicates the dream state and allows access to parts of the brain that are usually not available to the wakeful mind. My people refer to our animal guides as entities unto themselves, but we know they are not. They are our own deepest selves made manifest to us. Sometimes they surprise us because the way we really _are_ is often different from the way we perceive ourselves. The wolf has always given me good advice because she represents my true self, my best self.

It should have troubled me that the wolf stopped coming to me.

It didn't.

I simply...shrugged it off.

That had become my primary method for dealing with the Delta Quadrant. Anger? Shrug it off. Disappointment? Shrug it off. Embarrassment? Shrug it off.

I had learned to ignore my own feelings out of self-preservation.

The Delta Quadrant broke me. The man I was before _Voyager_ – even the man I was at the beginning of our journey – was buried so deep inside me that I couldn't find him anymore. So the wolf stopped coming to me, and I stopped trying to reach her.

When I packed to leave _Voyager,_ I buried my _akoonah_ in a cargo container with my medicine bundle. I told myself it was out of respect for Seven, who did not approve of my spirituality.

In truth, it was because I was afraid the wolf _would_ appear to me again.

But you can't hide from yourself forever.

Leaving _Voyager_ with Seven was...not my best decision. I knew it even then. Standing with Kathryn, watching Seven hover over our bags and cargo containers, I realized I was making a terrible mistake. I even knew why I was making it. Something in me, maybe my best self making one last effort to set things right, caused me to linger at Kathryn's side.

“The years have taken a toll,” I said. “On all of us. On you and me.” I looked down at Kathryn, hoping she would understand. “Maybe someday we'll remember who we were before.”

“Maybe,” she said. “In time.” Her back was straight.

I nodded. “Time,” I said. “We have plenty of that now.”

“I suppose we do.”

I suddenly understood that I would no longer see her every day. The knowledge cut me in a place so deep I almost couldn't breathe. “I don't know how to say goodbye to you,” I said.

She looked up at me with clear blue eyes. “Then don't,” she replied.

I frowned to cover my surprise. For a crazy minute, I thought she might ask me to stay. “Don't? What do you mean?”

“Don't say goodbye. Just...take your things and go. We'll see each other again.”

“Soon?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“I don't know,” she answered. “I think I'll go home to Indiana for a while.”

I recognized the dismissal in her tone. I'd heard it before. “Call me when you get settled?”

“I will.” This time, I heard the lie.

I nodded. It was the only thing left to do. Nothing I would say would change her mind, and for years she'd barely listened to me anyway. I felt a spark of anger and embraced it. “Okay, then. Take care of yourself, Kathryn,” I said, and joined Seven before I could change my mind. As I walked away with our bags in my hands, I felt the invisible cord that tethered me to Kathryn stretch and stretch.

I shrugged it off. It was easy.

That was six months ago.

She never called.

Neither did I.

Seven is long gone.

I wish I could say I miss her. It might make me feel better about the man I was when I was with her.

I have bounced from assignment to assignment since then, unable to settle. The third time I requested reassignment, Starfleet told me to either take leave or come in for counseling.

I opted for leave. To accept counseling would be an admission that I had buried the best of myself and needed help finding it.

Help, when it came, was so unexpected I almost didn't recognize it.

I am spending my leave with my sister and her family. Today I caught my three-year-old nephew flinging things out of my cargo container, giggling. There was nothing in there that could hurt him, so I lifted him into the cargo container and let him paw through the mementos of my time on _Voyager._

It was like witnessing a journey back in time, a knot seven years in the making uncoiling before me. Paka, perhaps sensing my mood, handed each item to me with an expression that became more serene with every second. I named each the item and set it aside.

Kathryn's copy of Dante's _Inferno_. My custom comm badge from Quarra. 3D glasses from Tom's movie night. Boxing gloves. A handwritten letter to myself telling of a love I'd lost and couldn't remember. A lei from Neelix's luau. A Prixin candle. A Los Angeles magnet from an ancient Earth souvenir shop. The shirt I was wearing the day Tuvok came for us on New Earth.

The memories were so vivid that when Paka handed over my medicine bundle, there were tears in my eyes. I set it on the floor in front of me, lifted Paka out of the container and settled him in my lap. I unwrapped the medicine bundle, both dreading and embracing what each item inside would do to me. The _akoonah,_ abandoned for reasons both selfless and selfish.A stone from a river that ran now with ashes. A blackbird's wing that had soared in a once-clear sky.

A container of tiny Talaxian tomato seeds that were never planted.

A sliver of wood from a bathtub.

Paka imitated me, placing his little hand on each item along with mine. We sat for a long time, just staring at these reminders of everything I'd lost, until Paka snuggled his head against my chest and slept.

I let the tears fall, finally, knowing how much I needed their cleansing.

Then I closed my eyes. _Please_ , I whispered. _Please._

I placed my hand on the _akoonah_ and chanted the ancient words.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the forest where I'd played as a boy. It had been years since this place had appeared in my visions, and even if the wolf wouldn't come to me, I felt peace begin to seep back into my spirit.

But when I saw the flash of amber eyes, I held my breath. She hovered at the edge of the forest, took a wary step forward, then another and another. Soon she was trotting toward me. When she reached my side she licked my cheek and I laughed.

It felt good.

We played for a time, then we both flopped down in the grass. She did not speak.

Time passes differently in the vision quest, but I feel we have sat here for hours, and still she has not spoken. I sense that she will not speak during this vision. And that's all right. It's enough that she is here.

I scratch her ears. “I've been lost for a long time,” I say. She turns and nips my hand.

Maybe a part of me will always be lost. The Delta Quadrant changed me, took something from me that I'll never get back. Maybe the best I can do now is to find as much as I can of the man I was and reconcile with who I have become. I might never be the man I was before. I hope that I can be better.

It'll take time.

I stroke the wolf's bony back.

I'm grateful to have so much time on my hands.

-END Part 2-


	3. Watching

**Time On My Hands 3**

“ **Watching”**

 

She's never had this much time on her hands.

At first, I was frightened for her.

I remember what she was like after Daddy and Justin died. She became so withdrawn that we were all afraid she'd never recover. Mom was stronger, but she had Daddy's death to deal with, too. It was left to me to pull Kathryn out of her stupor then, and I was afraid I'd have to do it again.

When she turned up on Mom's doorstep after the debriefings, she had a pinched, sleepless look about her. It suddenly hit me that she'd gotten through all the media appearances on nothing but a grim determination to disguise how much the last seven years had cost her.

Well, grim determination and a daily gallon of strong black coffee, if I know my sister.

I'd watched her at the return party, dressed in her new Admiral's uniform. She worked the crowd like the professional she is, listening attentively to even the most boring of speeches, graciously accepting the accolades, proudly praising the strength of her crew.

I'd thought she was okay.

Until a few days later when she walked up Mom's porch steps with a bag slung over her slumped shoulder and dark smudges under her eyes. She looked exhausted. Not just physically exhausted, but mentally and emotionally drained, all blues and grays and jagged lines. When she dropped her bag in the foyer and leaned her back against the door, my fingers itched for a paintbrush. Here was a portrait of someone who had given all she had to give, saving nothing for herself.

Mom grabbed her arm and ushered her into the kitchen before I could fix the image in my memory.

The three of us sat down at the kitchen table. Mom had made brownies. Mom always makes brownies. I passed out the plates in silence. We all sat and munched. We'd had our big, tearful reunion days ago. Now Kathryn was on leave and had come home to rest.

Mom and I watched her, trying to look like we weren't. We hadn't talked about those days after Daddy and Justin's deaths, but I knew Mom remembered as well as I did. We were both waiting for the signs that Kathryn would withdraw again. The Starfleet counselors had met with all the families of the returnees, warning us about PTSD symptoms. But we already knew how Kathryn reacts to trauma, and we were anticipating it.

The tension was thick. I felt tight and jumpy, like a canvas stretched too far. I was watching her so closely I think my eyes even started to water.

When she pushed her half-eaten brownie away, rose from her place at the table and announced she was going upstairs to take a nap, Mom and I both jumped up as if we'd been sitting on springs.

“Let's take a walk,” I said. “Or we could bike over to the campus. Everything's in bloom in the Arboretum.”

Kathryn's eyebrows rose. Before she could answer, Mom broke in.

“There's a matinee of _Much Ado About Nothing_ at the Norvelle Center. If we hurry, we could just make it.” She smiled. “I hear the man playing Benedick is very handsome.”

I rolled my eyes.

I'm not sure, but I think Kathryn did, too.

She stared at Mom and me, her expression amused and grateful and irritated all at once. “I know what you're doing, and I do appreciate it,” she said. I started to say something but she held up her hand to stop me. “I assure you, I'm not going upstairs to wallow in guilt for the next three weeks. I've done all the wallowing I care to do. But I spent seven years in a part of space that was more hostile than not, trying to keep 150 people alive on a ship that was meant to be refitted in Spacedock every 12 months. I met a version of myself that I hope to God I never become. I just watched my best friend leave the planet with a woman half his age but without a backward glance. I have been feted, promoted, counseled, and debriefed. And in all that time, the one thing I have not done, or not done enough of, is sleep.” She turned toward the staircase. “I intend to do that now. I'd appreciate it if you'd wake me for dinner.”

At the foot of the stairs, she turned back and fixed me with a steely glare that would have made Daddy proud. “No bucket of ice water will be necessary.”

And she stomped up the stairs.

When we heard her bedroom door close, Mom and I looked at each other with round eyes. “I guess she needs a nap,” Mom said.

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“I hope she can find the bed.”

I've heard she runs a tight ship and her Ready Room on _Voyager_ was immaculate. But Kathryn has always kept a notoriously cluttered bedroom here, even as an adult. Maybe because she's always felt safe enough here to be a little less than perfect. And Mom had kept it just the way it was all this time. There was a very real possibility the bed was buried under a mountain of PADDs, books, tennis trophies and old uniforms.

She must have found it, though, and nobody needed to wake her for dinner. She came down on her own, looking a little less tired. The dark smudges were still there, but the pinched look was gone.

Two weeks have passed since then. I bring my husband and kids over whenever I can. My daughter Katie, Kathryn's namesake, can't keep her eyes off her Auntie. She's heard the stories about the famous Captain Janeway her whole life, and at six years old is prone to hero worship anyway. The two have been inseparable, playing with Mom's dog, restoring Daddy's old telescope, biking to Kirkwood Avenue for ice cream. I've even found them puttering in Mom's garden a few times. That surprised me; Kathryn used to hate gardening. Now she seems to enjoy it, although now and then I catch her staring at the plants with an expression more melancholy than a few tomato vines ought to inspire.

When anybody asks her how she's doing, she has one standard reply: “I'm keeping busy,” delivered with a lopsided smile.

But I know better.

The inactivity is beginning to get to her.

Mom is still teaching Applied Mathematics at IU. Kathryn goes over to the campus with her now and then, but mostly she stays at home. I'm getting ready for a gallery showing up in Broad Ripple so I've been busy too.

This has left Kathryn with more time on her hands than I think she's ever had, probably more time than she's comfortable with. It's not that she's not introspective, but I know she doesn't like to spend too much time alone with her own thoughts. She's always done better with something to do, whether it was a tough backhand shot to perfect or a physics theory to master.

To that end, I started sending Katie over to her after school. Katie's just a first-grader and doesn't have much in the way of homework, but she still thinks it's novel to have Auntie Kathryn's help. They've been working together on everything from multiplication tables to Vulcan geography. Last night, Katie was practically breathless when she presented a spelling test Kathryn had helped her study for. Not only had Katie gotten every word on the list correct, she'd puzzled out the extra credit words, too.

I wish I had captured the look on Kathryn's face when Katie handed her the school test PADD with the perfect score on it. Kathryn was proud, that much I could see. But there was something else there, too, something...wistful. Like she'd suddenly found something that was lost, but then let it slip away again. Or realized it wasn't what she thought it was, maybe.

She was quiet for the rest of the evening. Oh, she was attentive to Katie, and helped me with Katie's little brother when he got fussy later on. But she was withdrawn. And I was worried.

I cornered her in the kitchen just before we left the house. “Is everything okay, Kathryn? You didn't seem like yourself this evening.”

She whirled on me. “Didn't I?” she snapped. “And just how did I seem, if I didn't seem like myself?”

The ice in her voice shocked me. “I'm sorry if Katie upset you,” I said quietly. “Maybe we'll stay out of your hair for a few days.”

Kathryn stared at me, then her whole face just...crumbled. She turned away. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't know... I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing here.”

I put my bag down and turned her around to face me. She wasn't crying, but I could tell she was fighting it. I realized this wasn't the sign I'd been expecting, but it was a sign just the same. “You're supposed to be resting,” I said. “And healing.”

“How will I know?” she asked. “How will I know when I've rested enough and healed enough? And what am I supposed to do next, Phoebe?”

“I guess you do whatever Admirals do,” I said. “What _do_ Admirals do, anyway?”

She chuckled. “No idea. They gave me the promotion and sent me on leave without telling me.”

We sat down at the kitchen table. “Is there someone we could call for you? Someone you could talk to?”

She put her elbow on the table and jammed her chin into her fist. “No more counselors.”

“Okay, but there has to be someone. How about Chakotay? Should we get him here?”

She grimaced. “No. Definitely not.”

Oh. Well. That answered _that_ question.

“Is there anyone else?” I wracked my brain for the names of some of her old crew. “Owen's son? Tom – and his wife. They seemed to be worried about you. Could I call them for you?”

She blew out a long, slow breath. “No. They've got a new baby, and I can see them when I go back to San Francisco. And everyone else has their own lives to deal with.” She spread her hands flat on the table. “I know you're worried, but let me think about it tonight, and then I'll call in the morning if there's anything you can do. All right?”

“How about you call me in the morning even if there's nothing I can do, Kathryn. Just to talk. Or if you want me to come over, I can. It's Saturday. Katie doesn't have school. So just call.”

She nodded. “Deal.”

I squeezed her hand. “It's going to be okay. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“It'll just take time. Time will make everything better.”

“Phoebe, I know.” She rubbed her forehead. “In fact, I know enough about time to fill several databanks. Go home. I'll call you in the morning.”

And she did. She called me this morning, first thing. Frankly, I was a little surprised. But I was more surprised by her request.

“Phoebe,” she said, “I had a fight with Mom's replicator, and I need a box.”

I rolled my eyes. Kathryn and replicators. A love/hate relationship if there ever was one. “A box?”

She nodded. Even over the comm link I could tell that her eyes were more clear than they'd been in days. “A box. A big one. Can you help?”

“I...well, sure. What do you need a box for, Kathryn?”

She sighed. “Don't tell Mom, but I'm going to clean my room.”

I laughed. “Without being told?”

“I know. Shocking, isn't it?”

“Sure is. Eddie is napping, but we'll be over in a couple hours with a box. A big one.”

I signed off the comm link feeling more hopeful about Kathryn than I had since her return. Katie and I headed over later with the promised box, the biggest one I could manage.

When we offered to help her clean her room, she shook her head. “I think I need to do this alone.”

“Are you sure you can handle it? I know you beat the Borg --”

“Twice.”

“Twice – but that room...” I shuddered. “Should we send in a search party if we don't hear from you in 12 hours?”

“I'll make sure to stay in comm range.” And she headed up the stairs.

She's clearly still got work to do to find herself again, and I guess her old bedroom is a pretty good place to start looking.

But it's a good thing she's got so much time on her hands.

-END Part 3-


	4. Healing

**Time On My Hands 4**

“ **Healing”**

He has never had so much time on his hands.

My brother has come here to rest. I do not say that he has come _home_ to rest. This colony world will never be home to him, and our people, though close to his heart, will never be the family he longs to go back to.

This is the second time he has come here since _Voyager_ returned. The first time, he brought with him a very young woman he claimed to love. But it was not love I saw between them. I saw great affection and deep respect, but not love. She was a very beautiful and intelligent woman, and very desirable to my brother.

My children feared her.

I feared Seven on my brother's behalf. I sensed that she was using him to try to find a part of herself the Borg took from her. And I sensed that he was using her to keep something of _Voyager_ for himself, having lost so much already. I knew they would hurt each other.

My brother and I did not speak of this. He would not have appreciated my intrusion. He would have told me I sound like our Father. We would have argued. I was too grateful to have him alive and well and in my house at last that I had no wish to spoil our time together with harsh words.

This time, he has come alone.

I could see immediately that Seven's abrupt departure had left him vulnerable to the emotions he was using her to avoid. This time when he arrived, his eyes, usually so full of warmth and humor, were haunted. Six months after his return to the Alpha Quadrant, my brother has finally been forced to face himself.

The Starfleet counselors met with us upon _Voyager's_ return, naming all the emotions our loved ones would feel. But my people know very well the burdens a wounded warrior carries. His hurts are not visible. Aside from signs of age – tired lines around his eyes, graying hair at his temples – he looks like the brother I remember.

His wounds are deep inside, visible only in those pained, troubled eyes.

We have spoken only a little about his experiences in the Delta Quadrant. He speaks about the people, and I know from his words that he misses them. But still he stays away from them. He has done something that keeps him from going back to them, something that perhaps he fears they cannot forgive. I think it is more likely that he cannot forgive himself.

He has been here two weeks. Many of our people walk lightly around him, watchful for signs that the angry man they knew from the Maquis will suddenly return. I have no fear of this happening. The Delta Quadrant changed him, but I think that in time he will find a balance between the hard, distant man he became there and the gentle man he was before the Maquis. He will find the good in himself again and move forward.

I sense this, I _know_ this, because I have watched him with my son.

Paka, my Little Mouse, is a jubilant and gentle boy. He is sensitive to the moods of those around him. When my brother was here with Seven, I sensed that Paka wanted to be with his Uncle, but he was wary of her. It embarrassed Seven. It hurt my brother.

This time when he arrived, Paka toddled to him, slipped his arms around my brother's knees and leaned his head against my brother's legs. I think my Little Mouse sensed my brother's hurt and responded in the only way he knew how. Just by being with him.

They have been together ever since, every day. It is good for my brother to have someone accept him so unconditionally, someone who did not know him before the Maquis and _Voyager_. Paka never asks him how he is feeling, or if there is anything he can do to help. Paka only loves him. I think that this is what my brother needs more than anything. Someone who loves the man he is now, not the memory of the man he was before.

This is why I allow Paka to spend so much time with him, even though I fear it will break my son's heart when Chakotay leaves. But Paka is young. He will heal in time. My brother needs to heal now. He needs to heal so that when he goes to her, he will go with a clear mind and an open heart.

He keeps her image beside his bed. I know it very well now. I have watched my brother's eyes slip to it often as we talk in his room. I have stared at it myself when I have come in the night to watch him sleep. She watches over him, too, this red-headed woman with clear blue eyes and an ironic, crooked smile. I think he must turn her image to him when he lays himself down each night, so that hers is the last face he sees before he sleeps.

I do not know what to think of this woman.

I am grateful she brought him back to us. But she brought him back so broken he could not rest, and so bound he could not settle.

She is not the woman I would choose for my brother, if I could choose.

But his choice is already made.

Words are important. Words have power to hurt or heal, to enrage or soothe. I have listened to the words my brother has used to describe Kathryn Janeway. Wise. Brave. Strong. Compassionate. Kind. Intelligent. Caring. All good words.

But I have listened carefully to his silences, too, and I hear clearly the meaning of the words he does not say.

He does not say that she is beautiful. But she is. He does not say that she hurt him. But she did. He does not say that he loves her. But he does.

Her image is the only thing he unpacked when he arrived here two weeks ago. He has not touched the cargo container he brought with him. I suspect he has not touched it since he packed it on _Voyager_ six months ago.

But this day... This day, something has changed.

It is late, past Paka's bedtime. I have come to my brother's room looking for them both. Paka sometimes sleeps in Chakotay's bed, so it would not surprise me to find him here.

What I find instead makes me want to both laugh and cry, because it is so strange and so wonderful.

My brother is seated on the floor, leaning against his bed. His head has fallen back on the mattress and he is snoring. His right hand is curled loosely on the _akoonah_. He has fallen asleep while on a vision quest. My Little Mouse is sprawled on his lap, his cheek resting on my brother's thigh, his round backside in the air. His thumb has slipped from his mouth and he is drooling on my brother's leg.

The contents of my brother's now-empty cargo container are strewn all over the floor around them in a chaos of rocks, shells, clothes, books, PADDs, and dozens of bizarre artifacts I cannot even begin to identify.

Watching over everything – the mess, the man, the boy – is the image of Kathryn Janeway, that sardonic smile on her freckled face.

I stare wide-eyed at the objects around them. After seven years of traveling, these are the items my brother has chosen to keep. He does not covet material goods, so I know each of these things, these talismans, must have great power and great meaning to him. Each one must have a story, a story he must tell in order to heal properly.

I am wondering how to ask him for these stories when I realize he is awake now, and watching me with a sheepish grin that I have not seen in years. I raise my eyebrows and look pointedly at the mess on the floor. He shrugs. “Paka helped me unpack,” he whispers.

“I see that.” He shifts uncomfortably on the floor. “Do you want me to move him?”

“Could you? My feet are asleep.”

I step over the mess, careful not to tread on anything, and pick my Little Mouse up from Chakotay's lap. Paka fusses for a moment when I lay him on my brother's bed. Chakotay grabs a shirt from the floor and drapes it over Paka. He sits on the edge of the bed and rubs my son's back until the boy settles again and goes back to sleep.

I sit next to my brother, very close.

We are both quiet for a moment, making sure Paka is asleep before we speak again. When I turn to him to ask about the objects on the floor, I find Chakotay staring at the image of Kathryn Janeway. I catch my breath at the regret in his eyes, and the longing.

I slip my hand into his. “You will go to her?”

His hand tightens over mine. It is the first time we have spoken openly of his connection to her. “Yes,” he says softly.

“Soon?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I'm not ready,” he says.

I rest my head on his shoulder. “Soon,” I say.

After a moment, I feel him nod. “Soon,” he says.

I sit with him for many minutes, grateful for his nearness now, already regretting the distance to come. I knew I would not be able to keep him here, not when he so clearly belongs somewhere else.

He turns and kisses the top of my head. “Sorry about the mess,” he says. “I'll get it in the morning.”

“It's all right,” I say. “What are all these things?” I lean over and pick up a flimsy pair of old-fashioned glasses. They are the oddest glasses I have ever seen, made of paper with a red lens and a green lens. “What are these?”

He laughs softly. “That's a long story.”

I look up at his beloved face, more peaceful now than it was before. “Tell me.”

He smiles. “How about I put the Little Warrior here to bed, and you pick a few things out of the mess. We'll put on some tea and I'll tell you their stories.”

We sit up for many hours. He tells me stories that make me roar with laughter, and a few that make us both weep salty tears. When dawn breaks we are both exhausted. It is more emotion than I have seen him express since before the Cardassians came.

He is healing.

Soon he will go.

He has so much time on his hands now.

I am grateful that he has chosen to spend this time with me.

-END Part 4-


	5. Listening

My mother has too much time on her hands.

It's really the only explanation for...well, for everything.

For the new civilian clothes, the new Parrises Squares equipment, the new clarinet.

For the trip to Hawaii for a week, to Paris for a long weekend, to New York to hear the Julliard Youth Symphony play.

For all my favorite foods, from hand-wrapped sushi rolls to pepperoni pizza, prepared to perfection and served on Mom's best china.

She's driving me insane.

I know she's glad to have me home. I understand that. So is Dad. He's more subtle about it, I guess, although the next time I catch him watching me sleep I may have to say something. I'm thirty years old. It's just weird.

But Mom...

Voyager has been home for 4 months. I've been here in South Carolina with my parents pretty much the whole time, waiting for reassignment. And lately I've been pretending to be asleep in odd places and at odd times, just so she'll leave me alone.

I feel like a terrible person.

I should be happy to be here, right? Happy that I even had a family to come home to. A lot of the Maquis didn't. Captain – Admiral – Janeway made sure they were all pardoned and freed, but it was sad watching some of them leave. They didn't really have anywhere to go, and no one to go with if they did. I know some of them went to Dorvan. Philicia did, and Sue Nicoletti went with her. Mike Ayala went, too. Mike's wife died on Tevlik Prime, but his sons survived. That made Mike one of the lucky ones. 

Most of them had no one there to meet them when we arrived, and no one to go with when we left.

Commander Chakotay didn't. I heard his sister and her husband tried to get there, but couldn't make it in time. He left with Seven as soon as the debriefings were over. None of us knew what to make of that. Captain – Admiral – Janeway sure didn't. I'll never forget the look on her face that day. I've seen her angry before, and resolved, and sad. But never all at the same time.

Her family was there for her, of course. And my parents were there for me. So was Libby.

Everybody I loved was there. No one had died, no one had moved on, no one had given up on me. I guess that made me one of the really lucky ones. 

But now... I'm not so sure.

Because some of the other people I love are far away, for the first time in seven years.

Tom and B'Elanna have settled down in a new house in San Francisco. I was hoping to see them a lot while I wait for reassignment, but they have Miral now. They're pretty busy. And Tom's Dad is around constantly, and I can't help it. I'm still intimidated having an Admiral around when I'm trying to relax with my friends. 

The Doc is busy working on hologram rights. Cap – Admiral Janeway is working on getting his mobile emitter back, so maybe I'll see him more often after that.

Commander Tuvok is recovering on Vulcan. I talked to his oldest son a week or so ago. He's doing well. Tom's been talking about putting together a Prixin party. Maybe Tuvok will be well enough in a couple of months to join us.

Seven... Well, B'Elanna told me she dropped Chakotay pretty fast and is back at Starfleet HQ working with the team that's studying all the alien tech we incorporated on Voyager. I haven't tried to contact her yet. I don't want Libby to get the wrong impression.

Libby comes over now and then, but that's been...strange. We tried to pick up where we left off, but we both changed over the seven years. I appreciate that she never gave up hope that Voyager would return. Even Captain... Admiral Janeway's fiancé gave up and got married to someone else. So once again, I'm really lucky that Libby waited for me.

That's me. Lucky Harry.

So why don't I feel lucky? Why don't I feel happier? Why don't I feel anything at all?

Why am I lying in a hammock in the backyard, pretending to be asleep?

Is it really to get away from my mother, or is it something else?

Her voice follows me through the house sometimes. “Have some more ice cream, Harry.” “Do you need more reeds for your clarinet, Harry?” “Wasn't Libby wearing a pretty dress today, Harry?”

I'm actually counting down to the first day of school so she'll have her classroom of new eighth-graders to talk at instead of me.

Oh God, I hope she doesn't want to take me in for Show and Tell.

The thought makes me sit up so fast, I almost dump myself out of the hammock.

Suddenly I can hear her voice from inside the house, but for once she's not talking to me. She must have gotten a comm call. Maybe while she's busy I can sneak in, grab my shoes, and sneak back out. It's the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, but I really need a beer. At Sandrine's. With Tom and B'Elanna and Chakotay and the Captain.

The Admiral. Who is probably spending her time off doing something amazing.

Tom and B'Elanna are in San Francisco with a newborn baby.

And nobody knows where Chakotay is.

I feel like everything is just falling apart. Everybody is moving on. I guess I will, too, once Starfleet comes through with my new assignment. I should be excited about that. But mostly I'm just...numb.

I tiptoe through the house. Maybe I'll just take a nap.

And there's Mom's voice, right on cue. “I don't know what's wrong with him. He just seems to want to sleep his days away.”

I pause to listen to the response. “Well, Mrs. Kim, sleep was a bit of a luxury out there for all of us, especially Harry. He's an outstanding and dedicated officer, and he worked as hard as anyone. I'm sure he's fine. He's just...catching up.”

That voice... Oh no. She didn't. She wouldn't!

I dart back and stick my head into Mom and Dad's office. My heart jumps into my throat. “Mom? Are you talking to --”

“Harry,” Mom says. “Come talk to Captain Janeway!”

“Admiral,” I correct automatically. “Mom, please tell me you didn't call her.”

“I've just been so worried about you, and--”

“MOM!”

Admiral Janeway waves her hand on the comm screen. “Harry? It's all right. I don't mind. Would you like to talk for a while? I'm not busy.”

I look at the comm screen, and I realize that not only has my Mom called Admiral Janeway, she's called her at home in Indiana. My mother has interrupted an Admiral's leave because she's afraid I'm sleeping too much.

Starfleet is going to send me to Ferenginar for this. I just know it.

Mom gets up from the chair. “Here, Darling,” she says. “Talk to your Captain.”

“Admiral,” I whisper, but Mom has already left the room.

I sit down and face Admiral Janeway for the first time in almost four months. She's laughing. I guess this is a good sign. 

“I'm sorry about this, Admiral,” I say. “My Mom is just...” I shake my head helplessly. “I don't even know what to say.”

She waves a hand at me in dismissal. “No harm done. I'm glad she called.” She leans into the viewscreen. “How are you, Harry?”

I shrug. “I'm...bored.” 

She nods. “Too much time on your hands?”

The realization comes to me as I speak the words. “The counselors warned me about this, but I don't think I took them seriously. I feel like I'm just waiting for something to happen. But I don't know what it is.”

“What would you like to happen?”

I sigh. “I'd like to be back on Voyager. I miss it.”

Her smile is wistful. “So do I.”

“You do?”

“I don't miss the constant stress or the worry or the danger.” She grins. “Or the Borg. But I miss the excitement.”

I nod. “Exactly,” I say. “There was something new almost every day. Something different. And even if there wasn't, all my friends were there.”

Her eyes are suddenly very soft. “We're all still friends, Harry.”

“I know. But everything has changed, hasn't it?”

She nods. “Everything always does.”

We stare at each other across the comm screens. I recognize that maybe she's feeling just as adrift as I am. We're both waiting for...something. “What's going to happen to Voyager?” I ask.

She sighs. “I don't know yet. There's talk of refitting her, after the engineers are done studying all the modifications we made over the years.”

I lean forward in my chair. “Are they going to send her back out?”

“That's the scuttlebutt I hear.” She's trying to look casual and uninterested, but I'm not buying it.

“Under whose command?”

She folds her hands on the desk and looks at me very steadily. “She'd be Chakotay's, if he'll have her.”

I frown. “And if they can find him. I know he was on DS9 for a while, then Bajor. Now we've all lost track of him. Even B'Elanna.”

She sits very still and says nothing.

And it suddenly hits me. “You know where he is, don't you?”

She hesitates for a second. “Yes.”

“Have you talked to him? Is he coming back?”

She blinks quickly, but not before I see the sadness in her eyes. “I haven't talked to him. And I don't know if he's coming back. I honestly don't.”

When things were bad on Voyager, Chakotay and Tuvok were always the two people you could talk to. Tuvok didn't have a choice about leaving us all behind, but Chakotay did, and some of us could really use his advice right now. I'm suddenly angry at him – on my behalf and the Admiral's both. “Why hasn't anyone heard from him?”

“He needs time, Harry.”

“Well, he's got plenty of that, doesn't he? We all do.”

I feel her look of disapproval all the way to my toes. “You and I had families to go back to. Chakotay is trying to pick up the pieces of a life that was shattered long before Voyager. Be patient with him.”

I lean towards her. “He sure wasn't patient. He ran off with Seven like he couldn't get away from Voyager fast enough.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and draws back from the screen like she's been slapped.

And I just sit there for a second, staring at her.

If I'm mad about the way Chakotay left us...what must she be feeling right now?

They were an unusual command team. Some of the older officers on Voyager talked about it now and then. It's normal for a Captain and First Officer to become friends, especially if the First was hand-picked. But Chakotay wasn't hand-picked. She made him her First out of sheer necessity. Which made it that much more unusual how close they became. 

They were the best of friends, at least for a while. Some people even speculated that they might be more than that someday, if we ever got back to the Alpha Quadrant. But they seemed to put some distance between them towards the end, and his affair with Seven felt like he was turning his back on the Admiral altogether—even on their friendship. And she just let him go without a word of protest.

Now, watching her try to pull herself together after my stupid comment, I see that I have no idea what really happened. 

I take a long, deep breath. “I'm sorry, Admiral,” I say quietly. “That was way out of line.”

She nods, that quick dip of her chin that I remember from Voyager. “Accepted.”

I suddenly feel like I need to reassure her. “I'm sure that when he's ready, Captain Chakotay will come back from...” My eyes widen as I realize where he must be. “From Dorvan. That's where he is, isn't he? He's with his sister.”

She raises an eyebrow at me and almost smiles. “I really couldn't say.”

I smile back. This is a game we've all played with her before, sometimes over a comm screen with alien dignitaries watching, sometimes over a pool table at Sandrine's. “I suppose you also couldn't say if there's a subspace relay on Dorvan.”

“Hmmm. No. And I also couldn't say that if there were a relay there, it would only be monitored intermittently, given the colonists' preference for isolation.”

“So a person might need to be persistent.”

“I really couldn't say.”

I wonder if she's tried to call him but couldn't get through. Or if maybe he's not taking her calls. The thought leaves me cold all over. Someone needs to talk some sense into him. Maybe not me, but I bet he'd listen to B'Elanna. “I understand, Admiral, and I'll take it under advisement.”

She does smile, then. “See that you do.” She sits back in her chair. “Would you like me to expedite your reassignment, Harry?”

I think about that for a second. “If Voyager goes back out, I'd hate to miss it.”

“Granted. But maybe I could find you something more interesting to do while we wait for the decision from HQ. Something temporary, but better than sitting at home.”

I nod. “That sounds wonderful, Admiral. Thank you.”

“You're very welcome, Harry,” she says.

We look at each other for a long moment. This should feel awkward, but it doesn't. I respect this woman more than I ever thought possible. And I miss her. “I'm glad my Mom called you,” I say. “Even if it is a little embarrassing.”

She laughs softly. “I think all Moms are embarrassing, in their own way.” Her eyes slide sideways. “Even Admirals' Moms,” she mutters.

“Really?”

She nods. “For the first month I was here, my Mom kept trying to set me up with an actor she knows.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. It was horrible.”

I grin at her. “An actor, though. Not bad.”

She wrinkles her nose at me. “He was much too thin and blond. And at least ten years too old. Not my type at all.”

It should probably disturb me to find out that my former commanding officer has a “type.” It doesn't. In seven years on Voyager, we all found out things about each other that we shouldn't know. “Did you tell your Mom that?”

She shrugs. “Of course. But she just wouldn't listen.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her if she was so enamored of him, she should date him herself.”

I smile. “And what did she do?”

The Admiral rolls her eyes. “She called in a few favors, got him an audition with the Royal Shakespeare and took him to England for two weeks. He didn't get the part he wanted, but I'm pretty sure she did.”

I lean back in my chair and laugh. “Sounds like a lady who knows how to get what she wants. Reminds me of another Janeway I used to know.”

She gives me a lopsided but grateful smile and leans into the comm screen again. “You be good to your Mom, Harry. She's the only one you'll ever have.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” I say. “Take care of yourself, Admiral.”

The smile she gives me is wide and happy, and I'm glad to see it. “I am, Harry. Finally.” She reaches for the comm switch. “I'll call you in a few days with assignment choices.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

“You're most welcome, Lieutenant. Janeway out.”

The screen goes dark.

I sit there for a minute, replaying the conversation in my head. She seems...okay. Maybe not dealing with things that much better than the rest of us, but trying. In a way it's good to know she misses Voyager as much as we do.

We had something special out there. Something that Starfleet and our families probably can't understand. 

We went through a lot together, and that means something. We learned to lean on each other. Not just for survival, but for friendship. And in some cases, love. We were everything to each other for seven long years. You can't just turn those feelings off. 

And I don't want to turn them off. But things are going to be different now. Maybe that's why the counselors suggested we take some time off with our families. They told us it was to reconnect with the people we left behind...but maybe they also wanted us to withdraw from each other, even if it was only temporary.

Maybe they knew that some bonds would suffer and maybe even break. But that the strong ones, the ones that really matter, will last.

Tom and B'Elanna and I will always be friends. It'll be different, but we'll always be there for each other.

Seven will reconnect with us when she feels comfortable here on Earth. So will Tuvok,when he's well enough. The Doc will turn up with his mobile emitter soon. Admiral Janeway will make sure of it.

And Captain Chakotay and Admiral Janeway... They'll come back to their friendship eventually. I know it. They just need time.

They've got plenty.

So do I. And it's up to me to figure out how to use it wisely until my assignment comes through.

I get up to go look for Mom. I think I'll take her out for sushi.

-END Part 5-


	6. Telling

Time On My Hands 6  
“Telling”

We have way too much time on our hands.

Tom is standing over Miral's crib with the hideous stuffed targ from Harry and singing some ridiculous song about a crying hound dog while she giggles and looks up at him with those big eyes. It's the fourth time he's sung the song in the last fifteen minutes and it isn't getting any better although Miral doesn't seem to care. Miral thinks any little thing Tom does is wonderful. 

She's only seven months old, though. Eventually she'll figure out that not everything that he does is Earth-shattering.

Although that little thing he's doing with his hips while he sings? That's pretty okay. That might even be wonderful but I'll have to watch a while longer before I decide.

I have plenty of time. I'm sitting at the comm station in our house in San Francisco trying to get through to the subspace relay on Dorvan so I can talk some sense into Chakotay.

That's what Harry said I needed to do when he brought over the six pack of microbrew, the real thing not replicated, and the stuffed targ. “Call him, B'Elanna,” he said. “Talk some sense into him.”

The three of us argued about it while we drank the six pack. Chakotay is a grown man, I said, a stubborn, stupid, proud man, but a grown man and if he wants to hide on Dorvan for the next fifty years and never face up to the way he left us, just left us, well, that's his choice and who are we to tell him he made a mistake? That's his problem to deal with with and whatever consequences it may have for him and his life and his happiness are his, too. Not ours. His.

Harry just stared at me with his mouth hanging open.

But my husband gave me that soft smile of his, the one that says he understands me and that it's okay. “We miss him, too, B'Elanna,” he said, and I'm proud to say I didn't cry but I wanted to. I really, really wanted to.

Because I do miss him. I can't believe how much.

Life is good for me now, very good, and a lot of it is thanks to him. He looked out for me in the Maquis and he suggested Captain Janeway make me the Chief Engineer and he helped me see it was okay to feel the way I feel for Tom, that it didn't make me weak to admit it. It made me strong.

I took it from there, of course. And Tom and I have made a good life together here in this big house in San Francisco. I have a home now, a real home with people I love. I've thanked Admiral Janeway for everything she did to make this possible and I want to thank Chakotay, too. I want him to be part of Miral's life.

But the stupid, stubborn, proud p'taQ is gone and has been gone practically since the minute we were released from the debriefings.

As Harry and Tom and I drank the beer and swapped stories about Voyager and passed Miral around I realized that Chakotay is family to me as much as Tom and his sisters are, and Harry and Admiral Janeway and Sam and Naomi and the Doc and Tuvok and all the rest of them. Even Seven. Even Seven is family to me.

And because Chakotay is family we have a responsibility to find out why he's staying away and what's eating him up and how we can help. He's staying with his sister and I'm sure he's told her about some of what we all went through but it's not the same as talking to someone who went through it, too.

So Tom and Harry nominated me to call him. Because I've known him the longest. His history with Tom isn't the best, either, and Harry... Harry's just so angry with him right now. Tom and I talked a little bit about why and we think it has a lot to do with the way Chakotay left. Not that he left with Seven, that was weird but nobody's business but his. No. The fact that he left at all has Harry tied in knots.

Harry's very protective of Janeway and the way Chakotay just walked away from their friendship was...cold. It hurt us all but it may have hurt Harry the most because it was just so disappointing. Harry looked up to Chakotay. Harry's maybe a little too prone to hero worship. The Captain and Chakotay were larger than life to him, I guess, and so the way things wound up hit him hard. He expected better. From both of them, probably. I don't think he expected them to ride off into the sunset together or anything like that, but we all thought that their friendship would last. And if they could last, it would mean the rest of us could, too.

Maybe they were larger than life to all of us by the end. They got us home. They kept everything together, kept everybody motivated and focused for seven years in a part of the Universe that seemed determined to destroy us. Getting home must have been a hell of a letdown for both of them. What do you do after seven years of constant danger and worry and stress? I guess if you're the Captain you accept your promotion and go home to Indiana and sleep for six straight months which seems to be mostly what she did before she turned up back at HQ.

And if you're Chakotay... If you're a middle-aged man who lost almost everything that mattered before you ever got thrown into the Delta Quadrant in the first place... If you've spent the last 10 years trying to make a life wherever you are and with whoever you find there... I guess you run off with a willing blonde and hope you can forget everything you've been through and maybe find the youth you lost somewhere along the way. And when the blonde inevitably leaves you, you stay away from your family because you're just so damn embarrassed.

The p'taQ. I think I understand why he did what he did but it's still disappointing. I guess I'm mad at him, too.

So I'm sitting here at the comm station listening to Tom sing his horrible Elfin song or whatever it is and waiting for someone on Dorvan to hear my signal. This is the sixth time I've tried this week and I haven't been able to raise anyone and we need to get through to him in time for the Prixin party next month. He had to have gotten the invitation. Mike and Sue and Philicia and all the rest got theirs and they're all coming. But we've had no word from Chakotay. That's the other reason we're calling. Tom and Admiral Janeway and I have planned the party, and Tom and I are hoping Chakotay will see it as an excuse to come back that won't hurt his damn pride. But I keep trying to call and coming up empty and I'm getting tired of waiting. 

Tom swivels those hips again. At least the scenery is good today.

We're not sure we're going to be able to get through to him at all. Janeway tipped Harry off about the subspace relay and warned him that it wasn't monitored most of the time so we should be persistent. And we have been. After the fourth try I called Harry to find out if he knew anything else about the relay. He didn't and suggested I ask Seven because Seven had at least been there once.

So I did. That was a weird conversation: Me, calling Seven to ask her how to contact her ex-boyfriend who happens to be like a big brother to me and who probably didn't want to be contacted at all.

As usual, Seven didn't even blink. She told me that the relay was usually unmanned but that if we did manage to get through to a live person the call could be routed directly to Sekaya's house because as soon as Voyager established two-way communications with the Alpha Quadrant Starfleet had upgraded her comm equipment for her. So really it's just a matter of waiting and hoping we get someone at the relay.

I am drumming my fingers on the console and wondering if the call could be automated somehow to go straight through the relay and on to Sekaya's house without waiting for a response when the screen flashes and a woman's surprised face appears. I lean forward in my chair. “Hello?” I say.

The woman blinks. There's a one or two second delay and finally she says, “Heya. Who are you?” Her Standard is a little halting.

“B'Elanna Torres,” I say. “I'm calling for Chakotay or Sekaya. Can you route this call?”

The woman cocks her head to one side. “Starfleet?”

“Yes,” I say. “Starfleet is calling for Chakotay. Can you get him? Tell him B'Elanna Torres needs to talk to him right away.”

She nods. “A minute,” she says, and the screen goes blank again.

Tom turns away from the crib to look at me. “Hope he's home.”

I shrug. “Maybe we can leave a message if he's not.”

Tom goes back to his singing and I go back to my drumming until the screen flashes two minutes later and I get a full-on view of somebody's naked gut in front of the comm on the other end. “Kahless, Chakotay,” I say, wincing. “Put some clothes on.”

Tom gives me a look over the top of the screen. I wave him off. It's not like I haven't seen Chakotay's naked gut about a hundred times before. And his bare ass once, but Tom doesn't need to know that.

“B'Elanna?” Chakotay says. He sits down hard in the chair in front of the screen and yanks a T-shirt over his head. He looks horrible. Haggard and too thin and unshaven. “What's wrong? What's going on? Is everybody all right?” He's frantic and I draw back from the screen a little bit.

“Everybody's fine,” I say. “Miral's growing like a weed and Tom's good. I'm fine. We're all fine, Chakotay.”

He stares at me. “Torres, do you have any idea what time it is here?”

Oh. Uh-oh. I try to smile. “Middle of the night?” I guess.

“0300,” he says.

“Sorry.” 

“I thought there was an emergency.”

“No, no emergency.” Tom and I glance at each other. “Want to call me back in a few hours?”

Chakotay runs a hand through his hair, which is longer and grayer than I've ever seen it. “No, I'm up now.”

“Okay, good,” I say. “Did you get the invitation we sent?”

He smirks at me. “I'm fine, thanks for asking,” he says. “Sekaya's fine, too. And the kids and Koham. I'm sure they'd love to have you and Tom and Miral come for a visit sometime. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

I roll my eyes at him. “Did you get the invitation or not, Chakotay?”

“I got it.”

“Are you coming?”

He sighs. “I'm not sure I should.”

“Why not?”

“Because of...the way I left.”

“Without saying goodbye?”

“Yes.”

We stare at each other for several seconds. “It hurt a lot of people, Chakotay.”

He looks away from the comm screen. “I realized that as soon as I did it. I assume it's why no one has contacted me since I left.”

I frown. “It's not like you've tried to contact any of us.”

He gives his head a little shake. “I know. I'm sorry.” He looks up at me again. “I'm sorry for everything, B'Elanna.”

I see that he's miserable and he wants to come back but he doesn't know how. But I have to know one more thing before I can tell if it'll be all right when he gets here. “Why haven't you talked to Admiral Janeway?”

He looks away again. “Because of the way I left,” he repeats.

“With Seven, you mean.”

“Yes.”

It's hard not to laugh at him. “Chakotay, the only two people in the Universe who didn't know that was over as soon as we hit Earth orbit were you and the Admiral.”

“And Seven.”

“Please. Seven's not stupid. Once we were back she didn't want to be stuck with a boring middle-aged man any more than you wanted to be stuck with a child. She knew it as soon as you got to DS9.”

“You've talked to Seven?”

“She's back at HQ working with the team going over Voyager.”

“Your team.”

“The same.”

“Are they refitting Voyager?”

I nod. “They're going to. I think Command is going to offer the ship to you.”

“I don't want it. I never did.”

I shrug. “I know that, but they don't. You're going to have to come back here to tell them.”

“I know,” he says. He yawns. “How is Seven? She's okay?”

This time I do laugh. “She's fine.” I lean back in my chair. “Admiral Janeway and I have lunch with her every Friday.”

That makes Chakotay think for a second and I can practically hear the thoughts turning in his head like slow, rusty gears. Come on, Old Man. Try to catch up with me.

Then the color drains from his face. While he sits there staring at me with wide eyes another figure moves in behind him. It's Sekaya. I met her once years ago. I start to say something but she waves me off with the same smirk I've seen on Chakotay's face a thousand times before only on her it works. I wonder how much of the conversation she's heard up to now. He clearly doesn't know she's there.

Chakotay swallows hard. “How is...Admiral Janeway?”

I grin. “She's good. Great, actually. She spent the first few months of her leave in Indiana,but she's back at HQ now. She's working with my team, too. And also doing Admiral stuff.”

“She's...happy?”

“Very.” I look up at my husband. “Wouldn't you say so, Tom?”

He grins, too. “Definitely. She's got the old Janeway bounce in her step again. That Bajoran doctor going over the Delta Quadrant xenobiology reports seems very taken with her. What's his name, B'Elanna?”

I snort. “Sobari,” I say. “Nel Sobari.” 

“Sobari,” Tom repeats. “Good-looking guy, too. Your typical tall, dark and handsome. Just the Admiral's type.” 

Also eighty years old and gay. But we don't tell him that.

Chakotay's face darkens. “Paris,” he growls.

Tom steps around behind me so Chakotay can see him. “Oh, Chakotay,” he purrs, “I've missed that.”

“What?”

“The way you say my name,” Tom sighs. “So deep, so forbidding, so...”

Behind Chakotay, Sekaya bursts into laughter. Chakotay frowns and looks up at her and she puts a hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she says, still smiling. “I heard voices.” She nods at me. “It's good to see you again, B'Elanna,” she says.

“You too,” I say and nod at Tom. “This is my husband, Tom Paris.”

Sekaya's smile widens. “I've heard a lot about you both.”

My husband the charmer gives her his most boyish grin. “None of it good, I bet.”

Sekaya tips her head to one side and considers us both with deep, dark eyes that seem to see right through me. Just like Chakotay's. “I think you'd be surprised,” she says very softly. “My brother misses you both. He misses you all. He wants to come back to you. Can you help him?”

The air seems to have suddenly gone out of the room. Tom and I both still under Sekaya's steady gaze and Chakotay lowers his chin to his chest. After a second he looks up and there's no comm screen between us anymore, no empty space, no hurt. Just old friends, one remorseful, two with the means to help him make it right again. “Yes,” I say finally. “I think we can.”

Tom puts his arm around me. “There's a party next month. For Prixin.”

Sekaya smiles. “The Talaxian holiday to celebrate family. My brother has told me. You will celebrate there?”

I nod. “Yes. The Admiral has rented a hall on the university campus near her family home. Everybody who can is coming.”

“That's why we contacted Chakotay,” Tom says. “We sent an invitation, but we never heard from him.”

Sekaya looks down at him. “It is time,” she says. 

He shakes his head. “I can't,” he says. “I'm not ready. I--”

Sekaya cuts him off with a sharp phrase in a language I can't understand. He responds just as sharply in the same tongue and then they're off. The universal translator can't make anything of the language and the argument hits me like a wall of sound. I recognize my name and Tom's and “Kathryn.” But that's all. I look up at Tom. He just shrugs.

We wait.

The argument is fascinating to watch because they're so alike and they know each other so well that it escalates in a hurry and then dies down just as fast. Sekaya must know exactly how to get to him because after about a minute he stops talking. He rubs his ear and nods at her. She pats his shoulder.

They both turn back to face us. “I'm ready,” Chakotay says, “but it's too far. I'm not sure I can get there in time.”

Tom and I grin at each other. “It's taken care of, Chakotay,” I say.

He is confused. “What do you mean?”

Tom leans into the screen. “She sent a ship,” he says.

“What?” Chakotay's mouth falls open.

I laugh. “Admiral Janeway assigned Harry to the Sagan a while ago.”

“The science vessel?”

I nod. “Last week she sent them to your sector to survey for dilithium deposits. As soon as they're done, they'll swing by Dorvan on the way back to Earth. Just in time for Prixin.”

“On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer and Vixen!” Tom yells. “It's a Prixin Miracle.” I roll my eyes. Sekaya and Chakotay just look bewildered.

Chakotay stares at us. “She sent a ship for me?”

Tom laughs long and loud. “Don't flatter yourself, Chakotay. She sent the ship for all of you. Sue and Philicia, Ken and his wife, Hoke, Mike and his boys.”

I look at Sekaya. “And you and your family, too,” I say. “You're all invited. We'll have the Frangipani Room set up with holosuites for the kids to play in.”

They both frown at me. “The Frangi...what?” Chakotay asks.

“The Frangi--” I wave my hand at him. It's the same damn reaction I've gotten from everyone I've told about it. “It's a room in the Union building where we're having the party. We'll have it set up for the kids. So you should all come.”

“The ship will be there in two weeks,” Tom continues. “If you happen to be on it when it gets to Earth, great. If not, your choice and your loss.”

Chakotay hesitates for a second and then smiles and for the first time in maybe three or four years he looks happy. Really, truly happy. “We'll be on it,” he says. “All of us.” He chuckles. “Although I'm a little afraid of what Paka might get into on a starship.”

Sekaya gives him a shove. “That will be your problem, not mine.”

“You're his Mother,” Chakotay protests.

“And you're his Uncle. Father always said that Uncles have favored status.”

Chakotay shakes his head. “You're making that up just so you won't have to deal with Paka's mischief.”

“And you haven't made up ancient legends to get your way with your shipmates?”

Chakotay laughs out loud. “You have no idea, Sekaya. No idea at all.”

As we watch this banter between them Tom takes my hand in his and leans close to my ear. “See? He's okay, B'Elanna,” my husband whispers. “And everything is going to be all right now.”

And he's right. I know now how worried I was about my old friend and what the Delta Quadrant did to him. But the time away from us and with his sister has helped him find his feet again. I see that now. He's different. We're all different. But we're going to be all right just the same.

We all talk for a few more minutes and then I let Sekaya and Chakotay go back to bed. Tom is hovering over Miral's crib again singing that silly song about the crying hound dog. But he's singing softer now and I know that Miral must be nearly asleep.

I also know that Tom knows I'm watching him.

When he reaches the end of the song he tucks the targ into the crib with Miral and gives his hips one last wriggle. “Nice moves, Helmboy,” I say. 

He chuckles and strikes a pose. “Thank you,” he drawls. “Thank you very much.” Then he winks at me.

We have way, way too much time on our hands.

Not that I'm complaining.

-END Part 6-


	7. Observing

Time On My Hands 7  
“Observing”

Time on my hands.

A Human phrase. A fascinating one. Humans have a proclivity for anthropomorphizing abstract concepts. They are, by turns, as hungry as horses, as quiet as mice, as gentle as lambs and as sly as foxes. When they expose a secret, they let cats of bags. When they eavesdrop, they are flies on walls. When they are deceptive, they are wolves in sheep's clothing.

But their metaphorical treatment of time...

In human language, “time” is...a horse of a different color.

Humans save time. They kill time. They allow time to slip through their fingers and pass them by.

Time heals, flies, and marches on.

To a human, time is almost a physical thing. When they claim to have it “on their hands,” they mean they have an excess of it, and they do not necessarily know what to do with that excess.

To a Vulcan, time is simply...time. Not a physical thing, but an abstraction. A way to make sense of entropy. It simply is.

But even I must admit: Lately, I have had rather an excess of time at my disposal.

I spent the first six months after Voyager's arrival on Vulcan, first undergoing the Fal-tor-voh therapy to reverse the deterioration of my neural peptides, then recovering from the process with my family. I was reunited with T'Pel, she who is my wife, and my children. The recovery period was...uneventful. One might even say “unexciting.” If one were not Vulcan, that is.

When Admiral Janeway's invitation to review possible reassignments arrived, I was immediately intrigued. Aside from periods of meditation and gardening, idleness is not in my nature. Within 60 minutes of receiving her invitation, I had packed my bag, booked my passage to Earth and bid my family farewell.

That was eleven days ago. It is now a Friday afternoon in November, and I am sitting in a small Japanese restaurant off the Starfleet grounds with Admiral Janeway, Lieutenant Torres and Seven of Nine. Admiral Janeway invited me to this gathering, and while I was reluctant to accompany her I must admit that their conversation thus far has been...enlightening.

To wit: In the past thirty minutes I have learned that Lieutenant Kim's fiancée remained faithful to him while we were in the Delta Quadrant, and the two are once again discussing a formal commitment to one another. Lieutenant Kim's Mother thinks they might make an announcement to that effect at the upcoming Prixin celebration, and is, in the Admiral's words, “over the moon” about this possibility. I can only assume she does not mean this literally.

Lieutenants Torres and Paris have made plans to “ring in the New Year” on Risa. They are leaving their daughter Miral with Mister Paris's parents. Admiral Janeway wonders aloud if this means another Paris-Torres offspring will arrive within the year. Lieutenant Torres does not answer verbally, but her face turns a distinctly darker shade.

Seven of Nine's liaison with Captain Chakotay was short-lived. The two parted amicably some months ago and Seven has returned to Earth to work with Lieutenant Torres's Voyager team. She also corresponds periodically with the EMH, who is waiting for his portable emitter to be returned, at which time he will have full rights as a sentient being. He will be permitted to choose assignments, earn income, own property and pursue relationships. Admiral Janeway looks up at Seven, who merely raises an eyebrow. The Admiral smiles inscrutably and sips her tea.

When the waiter arrives with our lunches, I am...relieved. 

I believe I have just been privy to 30 uninterrupted minutes of, as Mister Paris might call it, “Girl Talk.” 

We eat in relative silence for several minutes, until Seven comments on the inefficiency of consuming noodles with chopsticks.

“It's a skill, Seven,” the Admiral says. “It just takes practice.” She is rather deft with her own chopsticks. This does not surprise me.

Nor does it surprise me that Lieutenant Torres's primary method for eating with chopsticks involves a great deal of stabbing.

The Admiral cocks her head to one side. “My contact on the Board says the Doc's emitter will be released just in time for the Prixin party,” she says.

Seven looks up from her half-eaten bowl of noodles. “Are you certain?”

The Admiral nods. “It'll be released to him the day before.” 

“He is aware of the gathering?”

I glance at Lieutenant Torres, who nods without looking up from her plate of mostly raw seafood. “We sent him an invitation. He said he wanted to come but he wasn't sure he'd be able to.” She skewers a very pink piece of nigiri with her chopstick. I look away.

Seven, who is never given to extraneous motion, is sitting particularly still. Her eyes are fixed on the Admiral. “How is his emitter being returned to him?” she asks.

“I assume the Board will send a runner to Starfleet Medical.” The Admiral looks up quickly and her expression changes, as if a new idea has just occurred to her. “Would you like to be the one to return it to him, Seven?” She taps her chopsticks thoughtfully on the edge of her plate. “Your testimony made a huge impression on the Review Board. He'd probably like to thank you in person.”

Seven gives a slight nod. “I would appreciate that Admiral. And thank you for suggesting that I testify before the Board.”

“My pleasure, Seven.”

We all return to our meals. Two minutes pass in silence, until the Admiral sets her chopsticks aside and picks up her tea again. She turns to me. “When will T'Pel and your family be joining you, Tuvok?”

I pause over my bowl of stir-fried tofu and vegetables. “In four days' time. We will spend a week traveling, and then arrive in Indiana the day before the Prixin celebration.”

The Admiral smiles at me. “Sightseeing, Tuvok?”

I incline my head. “Indeed. My son Sek and his wife wish to visit several Terran landmarks. The Grand Canyon, the cave paintings at Lascaux, Uluru, several others.”

“Are they bringing T'Meni?”

“They are.” My granddaughter is now five years of age – very near the age of the Admiral's namesake and niece. “Will your sister be bringing Katie?”

“She will. I'm sure the girls will get along famously.” The Admiral gives me a speculative look. “Sek's wife, T'Zael. Doesn't she teach at the Vulcan Science Academy?”

I set aside my chopsticks as well. “She is adjunct faculty there in the geology department.” 

The Admiral sips her tea. “I thought so. Vorik might appreciate meeting her.”

I ponder this statement. Vorik was promoted to Lieutenant upon our return, but has since refused reassignment to a new vessel. I had assumed he preferred to wait for Voyager's refit. Now I am uncertain. He has always had a keen interest in geology, however, perhaps even over engineering. “I will introduce them, Admiral,” I say.

She smiles and nods in thanks, then turns to Lieutenant Torres. “When is the Sagan due to arrive, B'Elanna?”

“The day before the party. Seems like that's when everything is happening.” Lieutenant Torres pushes aside her empty plate. “Harry hoped they'd get here a little sooner, but diverting to Magnus III to rescue those terraformers cost them three days.”

My gaze shifts from Lieutenant Torres to the Admiral. Surely, having sent the the Sagan on their original mission and diverted the ship to the colony, she knows precisely when the ship will arrive at Earth. The Admiral takes a slow sip of her tea. “Have you seen the passenger manifest?”

Torres nods. “They all got on,” she says. “Philicia and Sue, Mike and his boys, Hoke, Ken and his wife. They're all on their way.”

The Admiral's fingers tighten around her teacup. “All?”

Torres glances at Seven. The young women exchange small smiles. “Oh, and Chakotay,” Torres says. “He's bringing Sekaya and Koham and both the kids. Thanks for telling Harry where to find him.”

“It was just a hunch,” the Admiral says.

Torres smirks. “Right,” she says. “My ass.”

The Admiral hides her smile behind her teacup.

The waiter clears our empty plates and bowls and replaces them with four bowls of green tea sorbet. The three women continue to discuss the party plans over their desserts.

I have known Admiral Janeway for a very long time. But today I have a sudden insight into her character.

I believe I know why she prefers pool to chess.

She claims that chess bores her. But watching her now, listening to her discuss the upcoming Prixin celebration and the plans she has set in motion, I understand that chess does not play to her strengths the way pool does.

In pool, a player sets the cue ball in motion as a catalyst. It is a game that requires a player to understand how every ball on the table will react when touched in a precise way, to trust the physics and the potential energy of each moving part to produce a desired outcome.

Admiral Janeway is an extraordinarily good judge of character. She sees people exceptionally well – their weaknesses, strengths and potential. 

Throughout her career, Admiral Janeway has used this ability to produce positive outcomes. She can, with a few careful words, move the people around her to act in ways that utilize their own best qualities and in turn motivate others to do the same. I believe this is how she inspires such loyalty. She takes the time to get to know her crew and determine how best to motivate them.

In the end, her ability to judge character so well and produce positive outcomes may be in large part what kept us all alive in the Delta Quadrant. She was able to consistently motivate her crew...and manipulate her adversaries. Sometimes at great cost to herself.

In less than an hour, she has used this ability to set in motion a reconciliation between Seven and the Doctor, a possible new career for Lieutenant Vorik, and a reunion for her crew. I wonder how many other new opportunities she has facilitated in the eight months since our return. I remember again why I chose to serve under her. And I realize...how much I miss Voyager. 

We all finish our sorbet. Admiral Janeway thumbs the waiter's credit PADD over all our objections. Seven, Lieutenant Torres and Admiral Janeway make plans to meet again in a week. I will be in Australia with my family then, but we will all see each other again at the Prixin celebration. I find myself looking forward to it with a level of anticipation that is probably unseemly. 

Seven and Torres depart for the Engineering complex; Admiral Janeway and I depart together for HQ. She walks the streets of San Francisco in an unhurried fashion that is a marked contrast to her normal gait aboard Voyager, where a casual stroll was usually a luxury she could not afford. It unseasonably warm and sunny for November in San Francisco. I fall into step beside her easily, as if eight months have not passed.

We walk in silence for a time. I think back over the conversations I have just overheard, as well as our seven years together on Voyager. Many friendships were forged there, in the fires of constant struggle and danger. It was a difficult time and place to begin a relationship, but it seems that many of those relationships have fared well here in the Alpha Quadrant, where life is decidedly less life threatening. If the Paris-Torres marriage is any indication, some relationships have flourished.

But one in particular seems to have floundered.

I clasp my hands behind my back. “May I ask you a personal question, Admiral?”

“Of course.”

“You honestly did not know Captain Chakotay was aboard the Sagan?”

She shakes her head. “The ship just departed Dorvan on Wednesday. I hadn't had a chance to look at the manifest yet. But I knew B'Elanna would know.”

“Did you believe he might not have boarded the ship?”

She does not answer for a full minute. “We didn't part on the best of terms. I thought there was a possibility that he might not come.”

“But you hoped that he would.”

She does not hesitate. “Yes.”

I glance down at her. Her face is completely expressionless. “Have you spoken to him?”

She blinks. “No. Not since the day he left with Seven.”

Ah. I was already on my way to Vulcan by then. I did not realize that the relationship had lasted beyond the end of the debriefings. 

It occurs to me that Seven's quest for a fully human existence is something else Admiral Janeway set in motion. And while she did not force Seven and Chakotay to attempt a romantic liaison, she may believe she was the catalyst for it, and for Chakotay's subsequent absence. It would not be at all like her to set something in motion without anticipating all possible outcomes. Perhaps she knew that it could happen, but did not believe that it would.

“Admiral,” I begin, “I am undoubtedly not the ideal person to say this to you, but --”

She holds up her hand. “I know where this is going, Tuvok,” she says. “You're going to tell me it's not my fault.”

I raise an eyebrow and wait for her to continue. 

She obliges. “I know it's not. I encouraged her to live a fully human life, and encouraged him to see her potential as more than Borg. The rest was their choice.” 

“So it was.”

“And they're both adults.” She waves her hand vaguely. “Or he is, anyway.” 

“She is...inexperienced,” I agree. “Although quite attractive. By human standards.”

“And Chakotay is nothing if not very human.” Her tone is wry and amused. “Although he still should have known better.”

“Indeed.” We walk on. “Do you miss him?” I ask.

“Of course. He's my closest friend,” she says, very quietly. “But I think we needed some time apart. To readjust and reassess.”

“Do you think he'll stay?”

She chuckles. “If there's one thing I'm sure of these days, Tuvok, it's that I have no idea what Chakotay's thinking. Not anymore.”

We walk the last few blocks toward the HQ complex in silence.

Captain Chakotay would not have been chosen for Command track and promoted through the ranks without also being a good judge of character. But Chakotay tends to act only on the positive qualities in those around him. This selective response allows him to be easily deceived – by me, for example, when I infiltrated his Maquis cell and joined the crew of the Val Jean. Chakotay is readily swayed by assurances of dedication to the causes he values. His choice to see and act on only the good in the people around him is both a strength and a weakness. He inspires great loyalty, but opens himself up to great betrayal.

He is easily manipulated, a quality that Admiral Janeway, a master manipulator, could not fail to use to her advantage – especially given that the moment she destroyed the Caretaker's array, he willingly shifted his loyalty to Voyager's mission, and to her.

Their styles complemented each other well at the beginning of our journey.

But over the years she used her ability to manipulate others – and him – so often he came to expect it. He no longer saw only the positive in her. 

For her part, she chose not to see the negative consequences her manipulation had on their relationship, both professional and personal. 

They reversed roles, a reversal that could only result in disappointment – in each other and in themselves.

I am a Vulcan. But I have lived among humans for most of my adult life, and I am also a married man. I remember the intensity of their first meeting on Voyager's Bridge. I observed their daily interactions from my station. I heard the tightness in their voices when I contacted them on New Earth, and saw the regret they would not express to each other upon their return. I observed his fatigue with her guilt and self-destructive streak. I observed her impatience with his easy acquiescence and eventual disinterest. Through many trials and struggles and tests, I watched them grow closer and I watched them grow apart. 

In the Delta Quadrant, it was impossible for them to escape from each other. They had to maintain their professional relationship even while their friendship suffered.

Returning to the Alpha Quadrant has allowed them much-needed space and time. I can see that Admiral Janeway has returned to herself. She is once again using her ability to inspire in a positive way, rather than manipulating the people around her to her own ends. Perhaps Captain Chakotay has similarly rediscovered the honorable man he once was.

And I wonder what new shape their relationship might take, now that they have been able to reflect upon everything they've been through. When they are their best selves, working together toward a common goal, they are a force to be reckoned with.

I slow my steps as we approach the Admiral's office building. “Kathryn...” I begin. At the sound of her name she turns to look at me, as I knew she would. “Do you want him to stay?”

She stares at me with a look that has cowed many a hostile alien. Then she exhales a long, slow breath. “Let me make one thing very clear, Tuvok. I do miss him. Very much. But I'm...content with my life here. And while I want my friend back more than I can express, I don't need him. I'm looking forward to seeing him again, but I'm hardly pining away like a lonely teenager.” 

“I did not say that you were.”

“I know you didn't, my friend. But others have, and it's simply not true.” 

She turns away and takes a few slow, thoughtful steps toward the office building. Then she turns back to me, her shoulders set and her expression determined. “Chakotay and I lost something out there. But I can't figure out what it was, and I don't know if we can get it back. I hope we can. I'd like to try. But in the end, he needs to figure out what makes him happy. I'll be ecstatic if decides to stay, and if we can somehow find our way back to each other. But if he needs to go to deep space or home to Dorvan to be happy, then I can live with that, too.”

She has thought this through carefully. But I wonder if she has considered it from all possible angles. “What will you do if he asks you to go with him?”

She waves a dismissive hand. “He knows better.”

“Does he?”

My question stops her short. She considers it, the expression on her face very like the one she wears while studying attacking ships on a viewscreen – or colorful balls on green felt. “Maybe not,” she concedes. Then she gives me a lopsided smile I remember very well. “But I can't claim 'Captain's Prerogative' and dismiss him like I did out there. And frankly, I don't want to. Not anymore. If there's a compromise that makes us both happy, I'm willing to try to find it if he is.”

I study her face in the bright afternoon sunlight. The signs of fatigue that were all too apparent at the end of our journey are gone. Her eyes are clear and her smile is genuine. She has set something in motion that will be difficult for her to control. But she is intrigued and, perhaps, exhilarated by it.

“It will not be easy,” I warn.

“Our relationship hasn't been 'easy' for years. And maybe it never will be again. Right now I'd settle for 'cordial.' Maybe the rest will come in time.” 

“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “I hope that it does.”

Her head snaps up. “I'm not asking for your approval.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “I know. But you have it nevertheless.”

She gives a quick, decisive nod. “Then, because it is given freely, I'll take it, Tuvok. And I appreciate it. More than you know.”

We part in front of her building after making plans to meet for a meal with my family when they arrive. I watch her bound up the steps of her office building. She seems...younger. Unburdened. I am gratified to see it.

She has used her time well.

I only hope that for both their sakes, Chakotay has done the same.

-END Part 7-


	8. Feeling

Time On My Hands 8  
“Feeling”

I have a piece of time in my hand.

It is 7.62 centimeters long and 5.08 centimeters wide. It weighs 113.4 grams. Even deactivated, it gives off a slight EM signature that my remaining Borg implants identify and catalog. Its silver surface is cool in my palm.

It was acquired by Voyager before Admiral Janeway rescued me from the Collective, a piece of 29th century technology displaced into the 24th.

It is, almost literally, a piece of time.

It is also the means by which the Emergency Medical Hologram...the Doctor...my friend...will finally be free.

He has been allowed only intermittent and supervised use of this portable holoemitter in the months since Voyager's return. The Department of Temporal Investigations confiscated the device immediately and have been studying it ever since. 

“Studying” is not the word the Doctor has used to described DTI's actions. “Holding it hostage” is the phrase he has used most recently. 

Starfleet Medical assigned him an office and have allowed him to work on cataloging the xenobiology and medical data from Voyager. His office has holoemitters, as do certain portions of the building. His program can be downloaded across the Federation network and activated in any room with a sufficiently advanced holoemitter. Starfleet has a bias towards flesh-and-blood physicians, however, and he has rarely been outside his office. He has been allowed the use of the portable device twice: Once for debriefing, and once to appear at his own sentience hearing.

I have spoken to him four times since our return, but never in person. 

I am sorry for this this. 

I did not understand how much until Admiral Janeway encouraged me to testify on his behalf before the Review Board. I spoke of his attempts to assist me in rediscovering my humanity and coping with my emotions. The lead panelist, a high-ranking Operations technician, dismissed these actions as being well within the Doctor's defined parameters rather evidence of his sentience.

“The EMH program has a psychology subroutine,” she said. “His actions are proof that the EMH tool functioned the way it was designed.”

Tool.

The word...disturbed me.

The Board was prepared to relegate him to virtual nonexistence. They saw him as nothing more than a spanner in an equipment drawer. A useful object to be retrieved and utilized when needed, then discarded until need arises again. And if need never arises again, so be it. To the Board, he was a mere thing.

Not an individual.

When I realized this, my hand clenched the edge of the table with such force that my fingers made indentations in its surface.

I was angry. I looked around the room for guidance and saw Admiral Janeway seated in the gallery. She nodded once in encouragement. I nodded back and returned my attention to the Board.

I spoke of the Doctor's compassion for the crew. I told them about his innate goodness, and his torment over the ethical dilemmas he occasionally faced in the performance of his duties. I spoke of his kindness toward me, and his insistence that I see myself as something more than Borg.

“These are not the actions of a tool,” I said. “The Doctor has grown far beyond the limitations of his programming. A tool is not capable of recognizing an ethical dilemma. A tool does not express compassion or kindness. These are the emotions of a self-aware individual. A person. A friend.”

As soon as I said the words, I knew why Admiral Janeway had encouraged me to testify before the Board. 

I also knew that, where the Doctor was concerned, I had committed a terrible oversight. And I began to experience a new emotion: regret.

I looked to Admiral Janeway again. Her eyes were very bright. She smiled at me. “Well done, Seven,” she whispered. “Well done.”

The Board took an additional week to rule in the Doctor's favor. DTI then reassembled his portable emitter – with help from Lieutenant Torres – and released it for his unlimited use.

I retrieved it from DTI this morning. Admiral Janeway suggested that I should be the one to return it to him, perhaps for the same reasons she suggested I testify before the Board. I believe she recognized that I had made a mistake some months ago, long before I recognized it myself.

Now I am walking across the Starfleet Medical Campus with a piece of time in my hand. 

The bag over my shoulder thumps against my hip as I make my way to the Doctor's office in a little-used records building at the edge of the campus. Several individuals stare openly at me as I pass. This scrutiny is something I have had to grow accustomed to since our return to the Alpha Quadrant. As usual, I do not know if these men are more intrigued by my appearance or my Borg implants. I ignore them. 

My thoughts are for the Doctor only. He has been allowed to see only Voyager shipmates, not patients, and the members of the team assigned to the data project. The building that houses his office is old, quiet and rather shabby in appearance. I assume he will be relieved to escape it.

Outside his office, I take a moment to examine my emotions. The regret I have felt since the day of my testimony is still there, but now I feel a curious mix of anticipation and trepidation. I am...nervous. I straighten my uniform and ring the chime.

The door slides open. The Doctor is seated at his desk with a PADD in hand. He is exactly as I remember him from Voyager. And I am very glad to see him.

He does not look up from his work. “If that's the rest of the Vidiian data,” he says, “just leave it, Charlie. I'm not quite ready for it yet.”

I permit myself a small smile. “My designation is not 'Charlie,'” I say.

The Doctor looks up abruptly. “Seven!” he exclaims. His smile is warm and inviting. “How lovely to see you.” He moves around the edge of his desk and touches my arm. To my surprise, he leans forward and kisses my cheek. I feel my face redden. The Doctor must notice this, but does not remark upon it. “Please sit down.” He ushers me to a pair of comfortable chairs in the corner of his small office. “Can I get you anything from the replicator? A beverage?”

“A beverage would be acceptable,” I say. I place my bag beside the chair and sit. “A cup of blueberry tea with vanilla, please.”

An emotion that I cannot identify crosses his features when I make this request.

He hands me a cup of tea and sits down. “I've been meaning to contact you,” he says. “I want to thank you for what you said to the Board. I understand that your testimony was pivotal to the final ruling.”

“You are welcome,” I reply. “And congratulations.”

His smile widens. “Thank you.” He watches intently as I sip my tea. “How is it?” he asks.

I consider my words carefully. “It is very hot. I can taste the tartness of the dried blueberries and the sweetness of the vanilla.”

He nods. “Now, to what to I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

I set the tea on the table between us. “I have something for you,” I say, and hold out my hand with the portable emitter.

The Doctor's smile fades somewhat as he stares at the object in my palm. “Admiral Janeway told me the Board would send a runner,” he says very quietly.

“She suggested I bring it instead. I believe she thought we might have things to discuss.”

He looks up at me. “Do we?” he asks.

“We do,” I reply. “But first, this.” I activate the emitter and affix it to his left shoulder. His holomatrix shimmers and realigns.

His smile is tentative. “Computer,” I say, “deactivate this room's holoemitters.” The office's emitters go dark. The Doctor does not waver. Now his expression is one of satisfaction and relief.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Would you like to leave immediately?” I ask.

He waves at my teacup. “Finish your tea first. Let's talk.”

I retrieve my tea. I note with some curiosity that my hand is shaking. “Very well,” I say. “What shall we discuss?”

“Well, it's been almost two months since we last spoke. What have you been up to? Aside from testifying before the Board, that is.”

I sip my tea. He wishes to indulge in “small talk.” Very well. “I have been working with Lieutenant Torres's team to analyze the various technologies incorporated into Voyager's systems. I have also spent time with my Aunt in Sweden.”

He sits back in his chair. “How do you like Sweden?” he asks.

“It is colder than I am accustomed to,” I say, “and occasionally damp. But my Aunt is very kind and the city of Sundsvall is aesthetically pleasing.”

“Will you settle there permanently?”

“Perhaps,” I say. “Although I am intrigued by the possibility of rejoining Voyager when she is recommissioned.”

The Doctor's smile fades and he looks away from me. “Under Captain Chakotay's command,” he says.

“I do not believe he will accept that assignment, if it is offered to him,” I reply.

“Why not?” he asks.

“He claims he wants to put his feet on the ground and keep them there,” I say. 

“'Claims?''”

I nod. “I am not entirely certain he was being honest with himself when he said it.” 

“What makes you think that?”

“Chakotay was...restless upon our return. I believe he was conflicted about his feelings toward being back in the Alpha Quadrant. He did not want to leave Earth, but may have felt obligated to go with me to a place where I would not be so scrutinized and ostracized for my Borg background.”

“I see,” the Doctor says. “So he went with you to Deep Space Nine.”

“Yes. But he was not comfortable there. I could see it, even as he refused to admit it to himself.”

“Deep Space Nine was not the 'ground' on which he wished to keep his feet.”

“No. Nor was I the person he wanted to be 'on the ground' with. Or anywhere else.” I place my teacup on the table between us. “His capacity for self-delusion is extraordinary.”

“Virtually limitless, in fact.”

“Yes. It is one of the reasons we terminated our romantic liaison.” I permit myself a sigh. “One of the many reasons.”

The Doctor touches my hand. “Seven,” he says gently, “did he hurt you?”

If I were given to laughing out loud, now would be the time for it. Instead, I simply smile and take his hand in mine. “No,” I say firmly. “If anything, I believe it is possible that I hurt him.”

The Doctor blinks. “Really?”

I nod. “The dissolution of our relationship was mutual and amicable, but I initiated it. I told him I was not ready to settle into a permanent partnership with anyone, something he claimed to desire. I also told him it was clear he did not wish to be permanently partnered with me. I told him that for him I was...a compromise.”

The Doctor chuckles grimly. “I'm sure he didn't take that well.”

“No. He did not.” I frown, remembering the intensity of that conversation. “But eventually he agreed that our relationship had probably been ill-advised from the beginning. Being in the Alpha Quadrant afforded us both new possibilities that we wished to explore. We parted ways and agreed to remain friends.”

“Have you spoken to him since then?”

“No. He has been staying with his sister on Dorvan, communicating with no one until the plans for the Prixin celebration were communicated to him.”

“If you don't think he'll take Voyager, what do you think he'll do?”

“I think that is entirely dependent on the outcome of his reunion with Admiral Janeway tomorrow at the party.”

The Doctor nods. He looks out the window for several seconds, then turns back to me. “May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

He lets go of my hand. “Why him?” he asks. “Virtually any man on the ship would have been ecstatic to spend time with you, Seven.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Like William Chapman?” My one ill-fated date with Chapman concluded with him being helped to Sickbay with a torn ligament in his shoulder.

The Doctor laughs. I am glad to have eased the tension between us. “No, not like William Chapman. But Harry Kim, for example. Or Mike Ayala. Any of them. Why Chakotay?”

“At first, it was simple attraction. He is a very handsome man, by human standards.” I take his hand again. “I only realized much later that he reminded me of you.”

This is, apparently, not what he was expecting to hear. “What?” he gasps. “He is hyper-macho, self-delusional, easily deceived, casually violent, overly temperamental --”

I stop this litany by taking his other hand in mine. “He is also patient and kind and compassionate. He is innately good and fair. He feels deeply, but does not express the depth of his feelings. He has great capacity for love. These are the qualities that reminded me of you, Doctor.”

We stare at each other for ten silent seconds. “Joe,” he finally says.

“'Joe?'”

He nods. “I've decided I need a name. 'The Doctor' makes me feel like an object. I'd like you to call me 'Joe.'”

“As you wish,” I say. “Joe, I owe you an apology.”

“Whatever for?”

“For failing to consider you for a romantic liaison,” I reply. “I had already dismissed you as a potential partner because I thought of you as merely a hologram. The rest of the Voyager crew recognized your sentience and individuality. But I did not, and I, above all others, should have.” I take a deep breath. “But you are far more than a hologram, just as I am more than Borg. I am sorry, Joe, for not seeing your potential, even though you saw mine from the beginning.”

Joe's eyes are very kind. “Apology accepted,” he says.

I nod. “I would now like to make amends,” I say, and reach into the bag I brought with me. I retrieve a wrapped parcel and offer it to him. “I have something else for you.”

He takes the small parcel. “What's this?”

“A gift.” I shift nervously in my chair. I am uncertain how this gift will be received.

He unwraps the parcel to reveal a small wooden box with a hinged lid. The top is inlaid with wood in different hues and grains, forming the stylized shape of a shining sun. Joe touches the design with his fingertips. “This is beautiful,” he says.

“I had it made by an artisan in Sundsvall,” I say. “Open it.”

He gently lifts the lid, activating the antique mechanism inside. The familiar notes of “You Are My Sunshine” begin to play.

I hold my breath and watch Joe's face change from surprise to recognition to hope. It is because of his tutelage, and Admiral Janeway's – and my brief association with Captain Chakotay – that I am able to recognize these emotions in him. My gratitude toward them all is nearly overwhelming in this moment. 

Joe listens to the song play through. Then he reaches out and places one hand against my cheek. His palm is warm. This is due to his programming. It is also comforting. This is due to his personality. It is that distinction that makes him more than an object to be locked away indefinitely, retrieved only when needed.

“You've come so far, Seven,” he says.

“We both have,” I reply. “But we still have far to go.”

“Will we get there together?”

“Perhaps,” I say. “I am still not ready to make a permanent liaison.”

“Neither am I.”

I cover his hand with mine. “Then let us begin with something simpler,” I say. “Will you accompany me to the Prixin celebration tomorrow?”

His eyes light up. “A date?”

“Indeed.”

“I would be honored, Seven.” He leans forward and kisses my cheek again. This time, I am not surprised. I feel my face redden – from anticipation now instead of embarrassment.

“But right now,” he adds, “I'd like to get out of this office. Do you have plans for the rest of the day?”

“No. I had hoped we could spend the afternoon together, and then leave for Indiana this evening.”

He smiles and rises. “Then how about a walk in Golden Gate Park?”

“I would like that, Joe.” I stand. He offers me his arm. I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow and we leave his office together.

We both have time on our hands here in the Alpha Quadrant.

I look forward to spending a great deal of it with him.

-END Part 8-


	9. Remembering

Time On My Hands 9  
“Remembering”

Sometimes when I'm holding her in my arms, I feel like I'm holding time.

I look into her sweet little face and I can almost see the years unfolding in front of me. Her first steps. Her first day of school. Her first lost tooth. Her first love – hopefully a long time from now – and her first child, maybe. I can see the future in her face.

But I can also see the past, in a way. I can imagine my parents – my Dad especially – looking at me and seeing the future in my face, too. I think maybe I understand him better now.

Miral is my link in a chain that stretches both backward and forward in ways that I'm only just beginning to appreciate. The other Voyager Dads told me that being a parent changes you. I guess I've become a little sentimental.

I'm walking the corridors of the Biddle Hotel with Miral in my arms. She's been fussy ever since we got here. Probably too much excitement in the air.

We've all just gotten back from an early dinner at a little Tibetan restaurant in Bloomington. It was supposed to be a dinner for the whole crew – Janeway reserved the entire restaurant for the evening – but the Sagan is late. We waited as long as we could, but Harry contacted me and said they'd been delayed by a few hours and we should all go on.

Dinner was great. Lots of talking, lots of laughing. Tuvok and Seven commented on the pungency of the food to the Doc – I mean “Joe.” Naomi Wildman parked herself next to the Admiral and peppered her with questions about Tibet. Vorik and Tuvok's daughter-in-law talked shop. It almost felt like the family was whole again, except for the absence of Chakotay and Harry and the others. They'll be the last to arrive tonight. A handful of people will beam in tomorrow, but most of us are staying here in the hotel together. 

The Biddle Hotel is housed in one end of the Indiana Memorial Union in the heart of the IU campus. It's a sprawling old limestone building that takes up most of a city block. The hotel is just one function, though; the building is really here for the students and is packed to the gills with shops, restaurants, study spaces, common rooms and a three-story recreation center. It's surrounded by gardens and cobblestone paths leading to all the academic halls. The opposite end of the building leads directly off campus and onto Kirkwood Avenue, lined on both sides with cafes and hangouts.

We have most of the hotel reserved for the weekend, and tomorrow the Alumni Hall for the party and the Frangipani Room for the kids to play in. Both facilities are right in this building. Janeway's Mom still teaches here and helped to arrange it all for us.

Admiral Janeway gave us a short tour of the campus today before we all walked down to the restaurant together. She's proud of this place. You can see it. In the Delta Quadrant when she talked about “home,” I think maybe this campus and this town were the places she imagined, as much as the house she grew up in.

I bet we made quite a showing for the undergrads, a bunch of old folks trooping through the campus with kids and families in tow. I chuckle just thinking about it.

Miral hears and wriggles against me, poor thing. Beaming over here from San Francisco and then sitting in a restaurant for dinner has disrupted her routine. I shift her onto my shoulder. Babies like routines. I don't, much, but I'm learning. All part of being a Dad.

In front of our suite I stop pacing and listen. The shower is running. I'm glad to hear it; B'Elanna's been pretty tense waiting for the Sagan to arrive and ought to relax a little. She and Chakotay have talked a few times and have straightened things out between them. But she's anxious to see him all the same.

Everybody's anxious to see all of them.

Admiral Janeway hung around to talk for a while after dinner, waiting to see if they'd get here. She finally begged off at around 1930 hours and went back to her house. Said she had work to do so she could have the whole weekend free to enjoy with us.

That was about half an hour ago. I've been pacing on and off ever since, thinking that the Sagan might not even make it tonight.

But when the lift at the end of the hall opens and Chakotay steps out, I wonder if maybe Janeway beamed back to HQ to see if she could hurry things along.

He looks a hell of a lot better than he did the last time I talked to him, although still a little tense. He's out of uniform, with a toddler in his arms. We both take a couple steps toward each other and stop suddenly, recognizing the similarity in our poses. Maybe we're seeing each other clearly for the first time.

Sekaya steps out of the lift beside him with a bag in each hand. She looks a lot like Chakotay, but more serene, somehow, and incredibly beautiful. Behind her there's a gray-haired giant of a man who must be Chakotay's brother-in-law. He's half a head taller than Chakotay and so broad he makes the Captain look slight by comparison. But he's also got the darkest, kindest eyes I've ever seen, and he's holding a little girl in his arms with a gentleness that's completely at odds with his sheer size. He steps out to flank Chakotay on the other side, and I figure something out: This is what Chakotay was fighting for when he left Starfleet and joined the Maquis, these people and others like them who couldn't defend themselves. 

Yeah, I really do see him clearly now.

“Paris,” he says. He shifts the boy higher on his shoulder and reaches out to touch Miral. I turn her around to face him. “Hey, Miral,” he whispers. “You're so big.”

“That's right,” I say. “Last time you saw her she was still pretty squashed. Crazy, isn't it?” 

He nods. “I've been gone too long,” he says.

He has, but I don't want to get into that right now. I'm just glad they're all finally here. As the lift closes behind them, I nod toward the kid on his shoulder. “Who've you got there?”

He turns partway so I can see the boy's face. The kid is barely awake, with his thumb stuck in his mouth. “This is my nephew, the Little Warrior,” Chakotay says.

Sekaya reaches out and ruffles the boy's hair. “Little Mouse,” she corrects.

The big man steps forward. “His name is Paka,” he says, very softly but firmly. Sekaya and Chakotay exchange chagrined glances. I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of an old but affectionate dispute among these people. I can't help but smile.

Sekaya drops the bags and holds out her hand to me. “It is good to meet you in person, Tom” she says. “My brother speaks of you often.”

I shake her hand. She turns to the big man. “This is my husband, Koham.”

I hold out my hand to him a little reluctantly, but he's just as gentle with me as he is with the kid. “Tom Paris,” I say. “And who is this one?”

The little girl, who must be about six, lifts her head and looks right at me with piercing brown eyes – same as her Mother's, same as her Uncle's. “Calusa,” she says. “No nickname.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Right,” I say solemnly. “I'll remember that.”

The lift opens again and Harry and Libby spill out, with Philica and Susan and the others right behind them. As they all move to find their rooms, I stick my head back into our suite to find B'Elanna pulling on sweats and a T-shirt. “They're here,” I say. She grins and grabs a PADD off the table behind her.

Without looking at the PADD in my pocket, I know what she's done. She's sent the pre-arranged signal – “They're here. Come on over.” – to the entire crew list.

There are introductions all around, then, as people flow from their rooms and into the corridor. Tuvok shows his granddaughter off to old Hoke, who has brought his own grandkids from Dorvan. Sam and Naomi seem very taken with Calusa and Paka. Mike Ayala's boys, teenagers now, put faces with the names they've heard for the last few months and start asking me about pilot training. Joe and Seven mingle with the crowd hand-in-hand, which earns them a few surprised looks and a lot of happy smiles – and from Chakotay, a hearty handshake and a kiss on the cheek.

Within a few minutes every door on the corridor is blocked open and we're all moving from room to room, hugging, laughing, remembering. This free-floating reunion goes on for at least an hour until around 2100, when the civilians and kids start to head back to their rooms. Pretty soon just a handful of us are left in our sitting room – Chakotay, Tuvok, Harry, Seven, Joe, Mike, Sam and Naomi, B'Elanna and me. Tuvok tells us about his recovery on Vulcan. Mike talks about how strange it was to come home to boys who weren't boys anymore, but young men. B'Elanna and I talk about our work on Voyager and with the shuttle design teams. Joe recounts – in excruciating legal detail – his fight for individual rights. Harry hints that he and Libby will have an announcement tomorrow and Chakotay replicates a bottle of champagne. Sam, with Naomi snuggled into her side, mentions her position at HQ. Naomi brags a little bit about her continuing work as the Admiral's Assistant, and we all smile.

It's a mellow and happy conversation. There's such a calmness in the room that Miral finally goes to sleep and I'm able to lay her in her crib. When I return I find myself grinning from ear to ear, just taking it all in. Prixin is a celebration of family, and this is mine.

I only wish Janeway were here to see it.

“The Admiral is going to be so happy to see you,” I say, glancing around the room. “All of you.”

And then Naomi pipes up for the first time in at least half an hour. I swear I thought she was asleep. “Especially Captain Chakotay,” she says. Everybody in the room, including Tuvok, turns to stare at Naomi. She just shrugs and yawns. “She's been talking about it for days.”

We all turn as one to gape at Chakotay, who is sitting stiffly in the corner of the sofa, staring at his hands.

A silence falls over the room. I take a quick look around and I can see that every single person wants to say something. But no one does. In fact, I'm not sure anyone even breathes.

Chakotay finally looks up and gives his head a little shake. “Maybe,” he sighs.

B'Elanna lets out an exasperated growl.

Everybody takes the sound for the warning shot that it is and suddenly has someplace else to be. They all stand up from where they're sitting or sprawling, mutter hasty good-nights, and scatter. The room clears in about fifteen seconds flat, until only B'Elanna and Chakotay and I are left.

Chakotay looks sheepish.

“So?” B'Elanna says. “Are you going to tell us what's eating you, or do we have to drag it out of you?”

His face twists into a grimace. “I'm still not sure I should be here.”

B'Elanna gives another little growl. “Quit wallowing, Chakotay. It's not attractive.”

“But --”

“Stop it,” she orders, and he shuts his mouth. She leans toward him. “Prixin is about family. You're family. You belong here as much as the rest of us.”

“Family,” he repeats. “I've made a pretty poor effort of it lately.”

“You sure have,” B'Elanna says sharply, and I'm about to give her a warning look for being so hard on him when, in a typically B'Elanna show of fierce tenderness, she slides onto the sofa next to him and takes his hand. “But you're here now,” she says, “and you can start making things right. Family forgives. You taught me that.”

“There's a lot to forgive,” he says softly. “Maybe too much.”

It's impossible to pretend we don't know who he's talking about. “But she wanted you here,” I say. 

B'Elanna smiles. “She sent a damn ship for you.”

He looks up with that arrogant little smirk, the one that drove me crazy every time he assigned me to an Away Team with Tuvok – or Neelix. “I thought that was for all of us,” he says.

“It was, but it was mostly for you and you know it.”

After a second he sobers and nods. He knows. We all do.

We sit quietly for a few minutes. Chakotay weaves his fingers with B'Elanna's. “I've missed you,” he says, and looks up at me. “All of you.”

“We missed you too, Chakotay,” I say, surprising myself.

B'Elanna elbows him in the ribs. “Don't ever do it again.”

“I won't.”

Miral fusses in the next room, and Chakotay quickly starts to rise, as if jolted from a deep sleep. “I should let you get to bed,” he says.

B'Elanna pulls him back down beside her. “It's going to be okay,” she says, looking into his eyes. “You know that, right?”

“I hope so.”

“Don't worry so much, Chakotay.” She kisses him on the cheek before she darts into the bedroom to check on Miral.

Chakotay and I both stand up and head for the door. “Big day tomorrow,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a little. He nods in agreement but doesn't say anything.

In the open doorway he turns back to me. I can see he's got something to say but can't quite find the right words. He shuffles his feet and sticks his chin out at me. “I can't believe I'm asking you this, Paris,” he says, “but I need to know: Are we okay?”

It takes me a second to figure out the “we” he's talking about is him and me. But then I remember the way he held my wife's hand in his just now, and I understand that Koham and I have something in common: We're both married to Chaktoay's beloved little sisters. And because Chakotay loves B'Elanna so much, and she loves me, it's important to him that everything is all right between us. We're family, after all.

“You hurt her pretty bad when you took off,” I say.

His shoulders slump. “I know.”

“But you're here now, and that's what matters. 'Family forgives.' She's forgiven you. And because she has, so have I.”

He takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Tom,” he says, and I think they're the two most heartfelt words he's ever said to me. 

He starts to go, but I surprise myself again by reaching out and grabbing his shoulder. He turns back, wide-eyed. “There's something else I need to say, Chakotay.”

He inclines his head. “Go on.”

Now it's my turn to take a deep breath. I'm about to tell him something that I've only shared with B'Elanna. But I think it's important that he hears this – and not just so he understands how much I care for her. “I realized something when I fell in love with B'Elanna,” I say. “Something about...people. See, every person is really the sum of all the different people we've ever been. In my case, that's the daredevil kid who always had a black eye. The Starfleet brat who buried himself in ancient pop culture to escape a disappointed Dad. The awkward teenager who couldn't figure out why girls liked him but didn't love him. The cocky pilot who made a bad mistake and was desperate to make up for it.” I tap my chest. “They're all in here. They're all me. Get it?”

He narrows his eyes at me. He's not sure where I'm going with this. This next part is going to be corny, but I hope he of all people will understand. “When B'Elanna looks into my eyes and tells me she loves me, all of those old Toms, and all the ones to come...they all hear that. They know she's talking to them, too. Not just one of them, not just the one she sees at that moment. All of them. They know they're finally accepted and loved. And nothing that hurt them can hurt them anymore. They are...soothed.”

I watch his face and I can almost see him looking inward, thinking back to the angry man with nothing to lose who materialized on Voyager's Bridge...the silent and serious Starfleet Cadet...the contrary kid who left home at fifteen and didn't look back until it was too late...and a hundred other Chakotays I can't even imagine, probably right back to a toddler a lot like Paka. He finally lets out a long breath and nods.

“That's the secret, Chakotay,” I say. “That's it. When you find that person, the one who soothes all those damaged people inside you, the one who tells you it's all right and really means it...you have to hold on tight and not let go. And you have to hope like hell you're that person for her, too.”

He starts to say something, stops himself and shakes his head. “Out there we each had one role, Tom. Those were the only people we could be if we wanted to get you all home in one piece. And I'm afraid...maybe we lost the others somewhere along the way. The damaged ones and the undamaged ones both. All of them.”

“I don't think you ever lose them, Chakotay. Maybe you just...forget them for a while. Although in some cases that's not so bad. You should probably forget the guy who can't pilot a shuttle to save his ass.” He chuckles. “And here in the Alpha Quadrant, you've had the time and space to find them all again, to figure out who you really are and who you can be together.”

He turns away from me and leans his forearm against the wall at shoulder height, his fist clenched. When he speaks again, his voice is so soft I almost don't hear him. “I miss her so much sometimes I can't breathe,” he says. “But I don't even know what to say to her.”

“There are two things you should never stop yourself from saying, Chakotay, because it'll only lead to regret.” He doesn't turn around. “The first is 'I'm sorry.'”

He nods. “What's the other one?”

“I think you know.”

He hesitates, then nods again but says nothing.

We stand quietly for a minute. I watch him try to rub the tension out of his neck and wish Janeway would have come back tonight after all, just to put the poor guy out of his misery. “I just want my friend back,” he murmurs. “Anything else will be more than I deserve.”

“But not too much to hope for,” I say. He turns to me with a startled expression. I shrug. “She did send a ship for you, after all.”

He tugs on his earlobe and grins and suddenly everything feels almost normal again. I punch him on the shoulder. “You don't have anything to worry about except getting some sleep. I have a feeling you're going to need to be rested up for tomorrow.”

“Watch it, Paris,” he growls, but the old familiar mischief is back in his eyes, and I laugh.

“There's the Chakotay we've all missed so much.”

He mutters his good-night and heads off down the corridor.

I turn back into the suite to find B'Elanna standing there in the dark, Miral in her arms, tears in her eyes. “You heard?” I ask.

She nods. “Good work, Helmboy,” she says, and moves into me.

“Do you think he listened?”

“I hope so. Kahless, I hope so.”

I'm about to reach back to unblock the door and let it close up for the night, when I hear the lift open at the end of the hall. B'Elanna and I look at each other. There's only one person it could be. We both stick our heads out the door to peek.

And there she is, stepping out of the lift just as Chakotay whirls around to see who's there.

It's a moment I don't think I'll ever forget.

They move toward each other in the middle of the corridor. Chakotay's body curls to hers and she rises in reply, her chin tilted up and her hands clasped in front of her. I'm reminded of all the times early on when I turned around on the Bridge to find them like this, physically trying to close the gap between their two chairs while they chatted about nothing. I haven't seen them together in eight months, and I haven't seen them align themselves this way for much longer. Now, though, it seems like the most natural thing in the Universe. Two people so attuned to one other that they automatically shift to an easy, comfortable fit.

But then they each pull up short with maybe half a meter of space between them – as if their first instinct is to embrace, but then they both hesitate at the last second. B'Elanna and I both sigh in frustration, and their heads twist around to look at us. Janeway's expression is startled; Chakotay's is pained. They look...disappointed.

Maybe this isn't going to be as easy as we all thought.

I give them a half-hearted wave, draw B'Elanna back into the room before she can say anything, and let the door slide shut behind me.

“Damn,” B'Elanna whispers. “What the hell's the matter with them?”

“They think too much.” We both flop down on the couch. “Probably a hard habit to break, since it kept us all alive for seven years.”

“I just wish...” she begins, but leaves the thought unfinished and sighs.

“I know.” I put my arm around my wife's shoulders. “So do I. But we've all done everything we can. It's up to them now.”

B'Elanna nods and leans against me. I reach out and lay my hand on our daughter's beautiful little head. It's late, but I'm content to just sit here and enjoy being near the two people I love most in all the Universe, savoring this time together and looking forward to tomorrow.

-END Part 9-


	10. Dreaming

Time On My Hands 10  
“Dreaming”

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”  
– Carl Sagan

 _Someday when I tell the story, I will begin with these words:_ I had never had so much time on my hands.

_I will speak of the day I left Voyager with Seven, both of us knowing we were not meant to make a life together but afraid to leave alone._

_I will speak of my sister's generosity in taking me in as if I had never been away._

_I will speak of Paka's unconditional love, Calusa's uncomplicated affection, and Koham's quiet respect, and how they convinced me there was still a good man inside me._

_I will speak of the days Harry and I warily circled each other aboard the Sagan, until we found a way back to the camaraderie we had once enjoyed._

_I will speak of B'Elanna's uncompromising honesty and fierce friendship._

_I will speak of Tuvok's perceptiveness, relayed to me much later, and Naomi's innocent insight._

_I will speak of Tom's wise and unexpected advice._

_Someday when I tell the story, I will say that this was how I spent all the time on my hands. Resting and recovering. Reconnecting with my friends. Preparing._

_But when I come to this moment, I will pause. I will say that an infinity of resting and recovering, an eternity of time, would not have been enough to prepare me for this moment. Then I will shake my head and smile, and I will tell the rest of the story – my part of it._

I thought I had readied myself for every possible scenario, from angry words to tears of joy.

I never imagined that we would silently stare at each other, separated by a few centimeters and a few thousand light-years.

She is beautiful. So beautiful.

At the sight of her I remember the first time I saw her on Voyager's Bridge. I remember the way she raised her chin and I lowered mine. I realize that for all these years, every time we've found ourselves face to face like this, we have always been just a breath away from a kiss. I wonder if anyone else has ever noticed.

I feel again the same lightning bolt of pure want I felt the first time our eyes met. It seared through my anger and burned away my fight, leaving me bewildered and compliant. I didn't understand what was happening to me.

But I do now.

I love her. So completely, so powerfully, that it's almost overwhelming.

I want to tell her everything in my heart, but I can't find the words. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I have spent weeks among people who value a few simple, well-chosen words over many long and empty ones. I'm out of practice.

I finally settle on the two words that I must say before Kathryn and I can go forward from this moment. Later I will think on the irony of taking advice from Tom Paris. But in this case, he was right.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

She draws back in surprise. It's not the greeting she expected. Then her face shutters. “For what?” she asks. She's not asking out of curiosity. We both know I have a lot to apologize for. She's seeking clarification.

“For staying away,” I answer. “For leaving. For Seven. All of it. I'm sorry, Kathryn.”

She nods once in acceptance. “I'm sorry, too,” she says.

This shocks me. “What for?”

She raises her chin. “For not contacting you and telling you we needed to talk, and I just wanted you to come home.”

At her words, all the uncertainty of the last few months leaves me. My need to come back and make things right is the only thing that's held me together since I left. Letting go of all that anxiety is such a relief I could collapse. “Thank you,” I say.

I must have started to move toward her, because she places her hand flat on my chest, right over my heart. The connection that binds us together, stretched almost to the breaking point because of me, snaps back into place. She holds me up.

“We have more to talk about,” she says. “A lot more. But for now...” Her eyes flick to her hand on my chest, then back up to my face. “It's so good to see you.”

“It's good to see you, too.”

She peeks into the room behind me, then up and down the hall. “Where is everyone? Where's your sister?”

“The kids were tired, so she and Koham put them to bed a while ago. I think everybody else is just resting for tomorrow.”

Her face falls a little. “I should leave you to do the same.”

“No!” I take a deep breath. “No, it's all right.” I start to turn back into my room. “Do you want to come in?”

We both take a step into the room, simultaneously see the gigantic bed, and stop short again. “Or we could take a walk,” she says, her voice amused. “You didn't get to see the campus earlier.”

“Are you sure it's not too late? It's after 2200.”

She laughs. “It's a college campus on a Friday night,” she says. “These kids are just getting started. Grab your coat and come with me. We'll go down to the Old Crescent and chase the undergrads out of the Well House.”

I laugh, too. “Kathryn, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“But if I lead, you'll follow?”

“Always,” I answer automatically. Then I stop myself, put my hand on her shoulder and look into her eyes. “Always,” I say again.

She raises her chin again, searching my face. I hold myself very still, hoping she finds what she's looking for. Finally she slips her hand into the crook of my elbow and we head out of the hotel and into the windy November night.

The campus is gorgeous, even in the shadowy moonlight. She walks me through green spaces and gardens and among old limestone buildings. She clearly knows this place well.

The Old Crescent is a cluster of ancient buildings at the edge of the campus, connected by cobblestone paths, bordered on one side by a wooded area. Kathryn stops in the middle of the quad and points out the features of all the different buildings – the bell tower, the carvings, the beautiful stone steps.

“You've spent a lot of time here,” I say.

“Mom has taught here since I was a little girl. When I was old enough I used to come down here and visit her in her office.” She gives me a coy smile. “And when Phoebe and I were teenagers, we'd hang around Woodlawn Field and watch the college boys play lacrosse.”

I laugh out loud, imagining a young Kathryn ogling the athletes, and the athletes gaping back at the tiny redheaded girl with challenge shining from her blue eyes.

The Well House is little more than an open stone gazebo in the center of the quad. There's a group of students there laughing and talking. They take one look at us and scatter. I suppose it's our age.

She leans against one of the walls and looks up at me very seriously. “It's good to see you,” she says again, “but we do need to talk.”

I sigh and lean against the wall opposite her. We need to clear the air before tomorrow, but she's not going to make this easy. I should have anticipated that. Once again, all the careful words I need to say leave me. “What do you want to know?” I ask.

She is quiet for a long moment. The wind blows through the open sides of the Well House. It's colder than I expected it to be here.

“Why?” she finally says. “Why did you stay away? Why did you leave?” She swallows hard. “Why Seven, Chakotay? Of all the women on that ship, why her?”

“I was jealous,” I reply.

Her face hardens. “Jealous.” Her voice drips with disbelief. “Jealous of whom, Chakotay?”

“Jaffen, for starters.”

She starts to say something, then stops and starts over. “I suppose that makes some kind of sense, but I wasn't myself when I was with him and you know it.”

I do know that. And just being with him when she was brainwashed wasn't what made me jealous. “You you were yourself when you asked him to stay.”

She looks stricken, then sighs and turns away from me. “You're right. But I felt obligated to make the offer.”

“How obligated did you feel, Kathryn? Just enough to offer him a job on the ship? Or enough to ask him to move into your quarters?” I hear the hurt in my voice. I wonder if she can.

She doesn't say anything. I'm not sure whether it's because she has no answer...or because she does and doesn't want to tell me.

“When you said you were going to ask him to stay I was so angry,” I continue. “At you for offering him what you would never offer me, even though I knew why you couldn't. At myself for feeling that way. Then at him for leaving, because if he had stayed, maybe you would have been happy. And I just wanted to see you happy, Kathryn. But...” I stop, unable to go on.

She looks up at me. “But what, Chakotay?”

I shake my head. “Then I understood that even though I knew it would hurt, my willingness to see you with another man if it made you happy meant that I...that I still had feelings for you.”

“After all that time.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“I'm sorry, Chakotay,” she says. “I didn't think... I didn't know...”

“I know. And it doesn't matter anyway. He didn't stay.”

“But you still wonder...what might have happened if he had,” she says.

I sigh. She knows me too well. “I don't have to wonder.”

“What would you have done?” Her voice is very soft.

“I think you know, Kathryn.”

She blinks once, then her face falls. “You would have left the ship.”

“I would have tried.”

I glance her way to find her standing very still, her eyes turned inward. I've seen her do this so many times I know exactly what's going on in her head. She's playing out the scenario, looking at it from all possible angles and coming to a conclusion about what would have happened. Then she nods once and looks up at me. I nod, too, because I've played out the same scenario in my own head. “I would have asked,” I confirm. “But you wouldn't have allowed it.”

“No,” she says. “The ship needed you. I needed you.”

I start to tell her that she had an odd way of showing it...but I leave it unsaid. She knows that, too.

She puts her hand on my arm. “I put you in a terrible position, Chakotay, and I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” I say. But I shake her hand off nevertheless. I can forgive her for the hurt she caused me...but it's hard to forget.

The wind blows a small tornado of leaves into the structure. I snag one and rub it between my fingertips. “It wasn't just Jaffen I was jealous of,” I continue.

Her head snaps back. “But there wasn't anyone else,” she protests.

I chuckle. “No, not jealous like that. I was jealous of Tom and B'Elanna.”

She freezes and I can almost see the thoughts running through her head again. “Their marriage,” she finally says, realization dawning on her face. “The baby. They had what you wanted.”

I nod. “Exactly. And I wasn't getting any younger.”

“I couldn't have a relationship with a subordinate, Chakotay, but you--”

“No, Kathryn. I couldn't. I made that decision early on when I broke it off with Seska. And even if I had wanted to revise that decision, there was literally no one, no one on that ship, who would have accepted an advance from me. The way I felt about you was too obvious after New Earth. No one wanted to compete with that.”

Her eyes widen in horror. “Oh, hell,” she says, and rubs her forehead. “I really did put you in a terrible position, didn't I?”

I chuckle. The absurd impossibility of our situation in the Delta Quadrant is starting to come home to me. “I think I put myself there, actually. And it's all over anyway.”

She nods. “So,” she says. “Seven. I think I know why, now.” She cocks her head to one side. “She wasn't technically part of the chain of command, and she didn't know about New Earth.”

“Exactly.”

“Hell of a foundation for a relationship, Chakotay,” she says, and even though the truth of the words stings, the lopsided smile on her face makes their landing a little softer.

I shrug. “When she asked, I was intrigued. I thought it might be my only chance to have what I wanted while we were still in the Delta Quadrant.” I drop the leaf to the ground and sigh. “But trying to keep it a secret should have been a sign to myself that I knew it was wrong.”

She takes a step away and turns her back to me. “I had to hear it from the Admiral.” I can see the hurt in the curve of her shoulders, the angle of her neck.

“I know. Seven told me. I'm sorry I didn't tell you myself.”

She turns to stare at me. “Did Seven tell you that you would marry, that she would die, and that you would live on but as a broken man?”

I stare at her. “No. Is that what the Admiral told you?”

“In part.”

I shake my head slowly. “Kathryn...did it ever occur to you that the Admiral might be lying to get you to do what she wanted?”

Her eyes widen. She suddenly covers her lips with her hand. “I...no,” she says. “It didn't. But it should have.”

I lean into her space. “Why, Kathryn? Why should that have occurred to you?”

“Because I've done it before, haven't I?” she whispers. “I've used people's emotions against them in order to get what I wanted.”

I settle back against the wall. “Yes. You have.”

“Damn.” She turns away from me again. “I'm sorry, my friend.”

“So am I.”

She paces the length of the structure, six slow strides to the left, six slow strides to the right, then she stops in front of me. Even in the darkness, her eyes are piercing. “If we hadn't come back when we did, do you think you and Seven would have stayed together?”

I've asked myself the same question dozens of times over the last few months, and come up with dozens of conflicting answers. “I don't know,” I say. “Seven is very intelligent and insightful. And she's learning to be more careful with people. But she's also judgmental and manipulative.”

Kathryn's chin lifts in defiance. “A lot like me, you mean.”

I nod, glad we're finally getting this out in the open. “Yes. But without the life experiences that cause a person to value compassion over judgment and wisdom over knowledge.” I look away from her. “Really, she's just a child. A precocious child, and she learns fast. But a child. On Voyager, I might have been able to tolerate that, or at least wait until she grew out of it. But here....”

I turn and pace to the opposite side of the structure. “When I was able to step back and look at the situation clearly, I recognized that Seven wasn't ready for me – not for an older man who was ready to settle down, not for someone whose beliefs differed so radically from her own, not for a lover. What she needed, and what she probably didn't realize when she came to me in the first place, was a father figure. But she conflated the two.”

“Because she's naïve.”

“Yes. Like a teenager with a crush on a teacher.”

Her voice is as cold as ice. “You didn't realize that until we were home?”

“No. Maybe I didn't want to. I'd like to think I would have, had we not come back when we did. But I can't be sure. And even if I had realized it...I don't know that I would have done anything about it anyway.” I finally turn to look at her. “I'm not proud of that.”

“You were that lonely.”

It's not a question, but I feel compelled to answer just the same. “Yes. I was also stupid and shortsighted and I'm sorry for it. For all of it.”

Now she turns to look out at the buildings around us, faded and ethereal in the moonlight. “If you had told me, Chakotay, if you had just come to me and told me what she asked of you, I would have said everything you just did. I would have warned you that she's young and naïve. She'll respect you, but not your beliefs. She's looking for a father figure, not a lover.”

Her breath catches in her throat, then, and my whole body goes numb. Her voice is barely above a whisper now. “But you know what else I would have said? The same thing you would have said to me about Jaffen: Go. Make a life. Try to find some happiness. I would never begrudge you something I knew you needed and wanted so badly. I would have been afraid you'd hurt each other. I would have been scared to death she'd wound your spirit. But if you had asked, I would have said 'yes.' Because I love you too much to say 'no.'”

“And I love you too much to ask.”

In all the time I've had on my hands to ready myself and to think about it, in all the scenarios I've imagined, I never dreamed that when we finally spoke these words to each other they would have a dry, hollow sound, full of finality, like the closing of a book. We love each other. We love.

But I'm afraid it's not going to be enough. Not now. Not yet. The Delta Quadrant – the unidentifiable something that we left there – still hangs between us.

Around us the trees sway in the November wind, leaves whisper along the ground. Young people laugh in the distance. A wave of deep sadness washes over me.

She leans her forearms on the edge of the open window. “Have you ever wondered what it would've been like if we'd met under other circumstances?”

I rest my hands beside her. “Maybe we already have.”

She looks up at me. “What do you mean?”

I shrug. “Basic cosmology. We know we live in a multiverse. There must be other versions of us out there, living other lives.”

“And you think we crossed paths in some of them?”

“I'm sure of it.”

She peers out into the night. “Tell me about them.”

I smile in spite of my sadness. She suddenly sounds like a child asking for a bedtime story – one with a happy ending. “Somewhere, there's a version of us who met at the Academy. Two serious, strait-laced Cadets desperate to prove themselves.”

“Did they fall in love?”

This is new territory for us. I vow to make the most of it. “Oh yes. She tutored him through Quantum Mechanics. By the final exam, they were engaged. And when she got her first command, she pushed to allow married Captains to bring their spouses on deep space missions – even if they served, too.”

“He didn't join the Maquis?”

If I'm going to spin this dream, I may as well spin it all the way. “Starfleet didn't give up his homeworld. He didn't have to.”

“And they serve together?”

I shake my head. “Not anymore. He's still on the ship, but he resigned his commission to take care of their six kids.”

She gasps in horror. “Six!”

I laugh. “Four?”

“Pregnant four times wile Captaining a ship?” She elbows me in the side. “I don't think so, Mister.”

“Two sets of twins. Two pregnancies.”

“Hmmmm. Maybe.” She sighs. “Are they happy?”

“Very. They know there's nowhere they'd rather be than with each other.”

“I'm glad.” She stands up straight and, to my astonishment, leans against me. “Are there more?”

“Let me see.” I scratch my chin and pretend to think about it. “In some Universe there's a Professor of Archaeology who fell in love with a starship Captain. While she was on leave she came to IU to see her Mother at work, and saw a dashing man stroll down the steps of that building over there.” I point across the space to a stately old limestone building. “He thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. It was love at first sight.”

“'Dashing,'” she echoes. “I can see that.” She pauses. “Or maybe they met when they were younger. He came here to study. She saw him playing lacrosse on Woodlawn Field and was instantly smitten with his athletic good looks.”

I grin. Someday I'm going to tease her about that “athletic good looks” remark.

“They've been together ever since," she continues.

“Did she go to space?”

“Yes. But she came back.”

I place my arm across her shoulders. “I'm sure they're happy, too. With their six kids.”

She takes a slow step away from me. Her voice, when it comes, is almost lost on the wind. “Maybe we're still on New Earth. Growing old together.”

“Alone, but not lonely.” I whisper. I have dreamed this particular scenario a thousand times since we left that place.

When she turns around to face me, her eyes are very bright. “Is every version of us happy together except this one?”

I want to tell her that yes, they are happy. All of them. And we will be too. But I can't. “No,” I whisper. My chest tightens, thinking of it, and I blink back tears of my own. Somewhere there's a Chakotay rotting in prison, or worse, and a Janeway blithely Captaining Voyager after capturing his ship and delivering him and his crew to the Federation.

Somewhere there's a Janeway married to a philosopher named Mark Johnson.

Somewhere there's a Chakotay living alone on a distant planet, imagining his Kathryn on her way to the Alpha Quadrant with Jaffen by her side.

But I can't say any of that. It's far too difficult, and far too sad.

“Of course not,” I murmur. “That would be unrealistic.”

She sees my hurt and smiles for me, and I love her even more, and hurt even more. “And six kids at our age isn't unrealistic?”

I shake my head. “Three sets of --”

She waves her hand at me. “Of twins, right. I forgot.”

I grin. “Or two sets of triplets. Or --”

“Stop right there,” she warns, and pokes me in the chest. “Before you find yourself in a deeper hole.”

I take her hand in mine. “I've missed this,” I say. “Missed us.”

“So have I,” she says. “For a long time.”

I feel more connected to her than I have in years, but it's bittersweet. “What happened to us, Kathryn?”

She shrugs. “Stress. Struggle. Misunderstandings.”

“Life.”

She shakes her head. “'Life' we could have handled. Life in the Delta Quadrant may have been too much.”

“Maybe. Maybe we just need more time to work things out.” I hope I don't sound as despairing as I feel.

She is quiet for a moment. Then she sighs. “They're going to offer you Voyager.”

“I don't want it.”

She pulls back to look up at me. “It's the next logical career move, Chakotay.”

I shrug. “That ship has one Captain, and it isn't me.”

“So you'd never go back?”

“I'd go back if you were in the center seat.”

“Back under my authority, as my subordinate.” I hear a note of disappointment in her voice. I feel a tiny glimmer of hope.

“No,” I say. “I could never go back to that. But beside you, in some other capacity? Maybe.”

She pauses. “That's an interesting idea.”

I shrug. “I do have a good one now and then.”

“When I bother to listen.”

My mouth falls open. This confounding, infuriating woman hasn't listened to me for years – and knows it, and is even making a joke about it. I have to laugh. “You said it, Kathryn, not me.”

We smile at each other. This is a conversation we could never have had on Voyager. I think it's a hopeful step on our path back to each other, and ahead to whatever our relationship will eventually be.

“If you don't want the ship,” she says carefully, “will you at least stay?”

“On Earth?” She nods. Her eyes are full of hope. In this moment she more vulnerable to me than she has ever been before and I make a sudden decision about my future, surprised at how easy it is. “Yes. Of course. I'll find something, whether it's with Starfleet or not.” I look around at the beautiful old buildings surrounding us. “Actually, I like it a lot here. Is the IU Achaeology Department any good?”

She draws back, startled. “Are you serious?”

I laugh again in spite of myself. She is surprised at how willing I am to stay with her. I am...charmed by this. “Kathryn, I want to spend as much time as possible with you for a while. I've missed you so much it hurts, and just being with you tonight has soothed my spirit. So whatever happens, however we wind up, you will not have to look far to find me.”

She searches my face for a long time. “So we have our friendship back,” she says.

I nod. “We'll always have that much, Kathryn. No matter what happens, we'll always be friends.”

“And you won't leave again without saying good-bye?”

“No. Never.”

She nods, then, and places her hand on my cheek. “You look exhausted.”

We've done more talking than we have in years, and I am spent. “It's been a long day.” A long day, a long passage to Earth, a long eight months.

She loops her arm through mine. “We should get back.”

She leads me from the Well House, along the cobblestone paths and back toward the Union. “But we'll talk more tomorrow?” I ask.

“Yes. You've given me a lot to think about.”

“So have you.”

At the hotel entrance we turn and face each other and that jolt of desire burns through me again. She tilts her face up to mine as she has always done and here we are again, just a half-step away from an embrace. Someday I hope we will be able to close that distance between us. “Thank you for coming tonight, Kathryn,” I say.

“I wanted to talk to you before the party. Before --”

“Before we had an audience.”

She gives me a lopsided smile and nods. “See you in the morning?”

“Prixin brunch. I'll be right here.”

She stares up at me as if trying to decide something. Then she gives a quick dip of her chin, the one that tells me she's made a choice. She curls her hand around my neck, pulls me down and herself up just far enough to place a tender kiss on my cheek. “Good-night, Chakotay,” she whispers, and then draws away from me before I can return the gesture.

“Good-night.”

I watch her walk away into the shadows.

I've been telling myself – and anyone else who cares to listen – that I only wanted her friendship back. I see now that I was trying to convince myself of that every time I said it. I'm sure now that everyone must have seen right through me.

If I could figure out what Kathryn and I lost in the Delta Quadrant, I'd offer to back right now and get it, no matter how difficult.

I'm so tired.

I make my way up to my room and fall back on the bed without bothering to turn on the lights. After a while there's a light knock on my door. I call out for the visitor to enter and Sekaya slips in from the hallway.

She pauses, studying me, then sits down on the edge of my bed. She takes my hand in hers and stays with me in silence.

The chimes in the bell tower ring out midnight, and I close my eyes.

 _Someday when I tell the story, I will end with these words:_ I was afraid we had run out of time.

_You will be angry._

_You will pout._

_You will raise your chin in defiance, just like so many others before you.“You promised me a bedtime story, Shinli Chakotay,” you will scold. “Bedtime stories must have happy endings.”_

_I will laugh. “This is a love story. Love stories don't always have happy endings.”_

_But then I will see the shimmer of tears in your eyes. I will brush your wavy hair away from your face and touch your soft cheek with my fingertips. “Don't cry, Katoha,” I will say._

_You will bury your face in my chest so that I cannot see you weep. “But it's so sad, Shinli,” you will say. “They should be together. They loved each other so much.”_

_I will hold you close. “Yes, they did,” I will say. “And it was sad.”_

_Someday when I tell you the story, I will end with the words of a man who feared he had waited too long and lost the one person he loved most in all the Universe._

_But you will clutch my shirt in despair, and I will know that I cannot tease you anymore._

_I will take your sweet face in my hands. “But it did not stay sad for long,” I will say. “And you must trust me.”_

_You will nod. “I trust you, Shinli Chakotay.”_

_“This is not the end of their story,” I will say. Then I will smile for you, and for the tiny woman with shining blue eyes watching us from the shadows. “But the rest of the story is not mine to tell.”_

_Someday when we tell you the story of how you came to be, Katoha...Little Cat...beloved Granddaughter...we will begin with these words:_ We had never had so much time on our hands.

-END Part 10-


	11. Playing

**Time On My Hands 11**

“ **Playing”**  

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

\-- Carl Sagan

_Someday when I tell my part of the story, Katoha, I'll start by scolding your Grandfather for keeping the ending from you for so long._

_He'll give me a look that's all innocence but hints at mischief nevertheless – the look that slips right past my defenses and nearly always gets him whatever he wants from me. I first saw that look on the day he introduced me to my spirit guide. I saw it every day on New Earth, once in a while after New Earth...and then less and less often as the years passed._

_Now it's a constant companion on my journey through this life, and I'm grateful for it every day._

_But I'll set these thoughts aside and I'll muster a disapproving frown. “You shouldn't tease, Chakotay,” I'll say._

“ _But it only works once on each of them, Kathryn,” he'll protest. “Let me have that much at least.” Then he'll turn and smile at you. “And Katoha already knows the ending. Don't you, Little Cat?”_

_You'll think hard about it...but only for a minute. Because the end of the story is in you, Katoha. It sings in your blood and sparkles in your eyes, just like it does in your brothers and sisters, your cousins, your Uncles, and your Mother._

_Then your face will light up. “I do know,” you'll say. “But will you tell me anyway, Grandmother?”_

_I'll sit on the edge of the bed beside you so that you're nestled safely between your dear old Shinli and me. He'll tuck the blanket around you and kiss your forehead, a tender gesture to show you that you are loved. So very loved._

“ _Ready?” I'll ask._

_You'll nod solemnly, both you and your Grandfather, and I will begin._

_Someday when you ask where you came from, Katoha...someday when you wonder why your Mother and your Uncles were born on a starship, but you and your brothers and sisters were born on this farm...someday when you look up at the stars and wonder how you came to be...I will tell you the end of the story, Granddaughter. And I will start with these words:_

We had never had so much time our hands.

We devised individual ways of marking it. I observed the position of the sun and moon, noted the sunrises and sunsets, watched the shadows change. I determined that a New Earth day would have to be a few minutes shorter than a _Voyager_ day and set our devices and clocks accordingly.

In his daily wanderings and comings and goings, Chakotay pocketed a small stone. When the sun disappeared below the far horizon he dropped that day's stone stone into a clear glass vase. A simple solution, a visible reminder of the passing days and nights. Simple, but elegant in that simplicity. “Someday we'll have something beautiful,” he said.

It was early in our stay there and I wasn't ready to hear the meaning of his words.

When the bottom of the vase was covered with ten small stones, I began to note a warming in the cool breeze and a lengthening of the daylight hours. I knew our planet's rotation rate and orbital path, of course, but I still looked for evidence of seasonal changes in our surroundings. I tracked avian migration patterns, noted the further greening of deciduous flora and the reproduction of fauna. I cataloged holoimages of colorful flowers.

Chakotay emerged from our shelter one morning, turned his face to the sun and said, “Summer is coming.”

When there were twenty-two stones in the vase, I dragged a telescope to a meadow near our shelter. I made a schedule for observing the phases and position of the moon and jotted down tentative notes for a lunar calendar.

Chakotay spread a blanket under the stars and began to name the constellations, spinning stories of heroes and villains, adventures and battles, great loves and great losses.

When there were forty-five stones in the vase, a plasma storm destroyed all the work I'd been doing to find a cure for the illness that stranded us there. That night after we'd cleared the wreckage from our shelter, he offered to empty the vase. Startled, I asked him why.

He gave me a thoughtful look. “I don't want you to think I'm mocking you,” he said solemnly. “I know you don't want to be here.”

 _With me._ I heard it even though he didn't say it. _I know you don't want to be here_ with me.

I stayed his hands when he reached for the vase. “Don't,” I said. “Save the stones. Keep adding to them. They make the time real to me.” He nodded slowly and left the vase on the shelf.

Later he told me a touching and transparent story. I began to understand him just a little, just enough to be intrigued by the days ahead. I imagined a time when the vase would be full and we'd count the stones out one by one. We'd set that vase aside and begin a new one. The thought made me wistful, but not so sad. Not anymore.

When there were fifty stones in the vase, I noted the warmth of the soil to a depth of fifteen centimeters. Chakotay rolled a handful of dirt in his palm. “It's time to plant,” he said. He took a shovel and dug up a plot of earth near our shelter. I planted the Talaxian tomato seeds we'd brought with us.

On the eighty-fifth day, the day Tuvok contacted us, Chakotay didn't put a stone in the vase. As we separated our mingled belongings in tense and wary silence, I noticed he didn't even look at the vase. He removed and packed everything around it, but left it on the shelf alone.

Wordlessly, he hid away all the other beautiful things he'd created for us in featureless, unlabeled cargo containers. His sand paintings and carvings. His workbench and my desk. The shelves and headboards. All gone. He dismantled the bathtub. He never touched the vase.

I didn't know what he intended to do with it. I only hoped he didn't mean for me to pack it. I couldn't bear to empty it.

I watched and waited for him to drop a stone in it that night. He didn't. At dusk he just slipped into his room without a backward glance. Later, so did I. _Voyager_ was due to arrive in twelve hours.

When I awoke after a fitful sleep on the morning of our departure, the vase was gone.

So was he.

I ate breakfast alone. _Voyager_ was nearing and I had no idea where he'd gone. When an hour had passed with no sign of him, I dug a tricorder out of a cargo container and set out to bring him back.

When I found him, though, I didn't dare disturb him.

He was sitting at the riverbank, still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the day before. The vase was beside him in the grass.

As I watched, he reached in, plucked out a stone and, with a sudden sharp movement that made me flinch, he sent the stone flying into the river.

One by one, he returned the stones to the planet. He held some of them in his hands for a moment, staring at them as if committing to memory the specific details of the days they represented.

Chakotay is a very private man, and I knew I shouldn't be watching him perform this most private of rituals. But I couldn't look away. I sat down with my back against a tree and watched until all the stones were gone. Then he stood and heaved the vase away from him. It arced high in the air, sparkling in the early morning sunlight, tumbling end over end. It smashed against a boulder jutting from the water and shattered.

At the sound of the breaking glass both of us let out a cry – mine muffled by my hand. I watched, fascinated and horrified, as he sank down on his knees at the edge of the water, his head bowed.

I do not believe he wept.

I have to believe he didn't.

To acknowledge that he did would be an admission of the hold that place had on him – had on _us._

Because watching him, I wept enough for both of us.

I thought we had so much time our hands. Time enough to learn each other carefully and thoroughly, to let go of regrets and misgivings, to make the deliberate and slow slide from friends to lovers. We had slipped quickly from enemies to allies, from colleagues to friends. I thought we had a lifetime to make this final step together.

I was wrong.

Half an hour passed – half an hour of _Voyager_ time; my mind had already made the switch – until he finally stood up and began to strip off his clothes. He folded each item neatly and set it aside. Vest. Shirt. Boots. Socks. Trousers. When he reached for his shorts I looked away. I already felt like a voyeur, having watched him throw the stones away. I couldn't bear to see him any more vulnerable than I already had.

I listened to him splash in the river for a time, glancing up once to see him standing waist-deep in the water, very still, his arms outstretched and his hands lightly skimming the surface. When he returned to the bank I looked away until I heard the whisper of clothing over skin again. This time, he was reversing the process. Over the regulation gray shorts he pulled on his gray turtleneck. Black socks. Red and black uniform. Shiny black boots. A change came over him as he dressed. With every piece of his uniform, the gentle, caring man who smiled easily and laughed often, the man I was only just beginning to know, faded. By the time he attached his rank bar, he was every bit my First Officer again. Still kind, still considerate, still Chakotay...but _Commander_ Chakotay now.

He left his civilian clothes behind when he turned and departed toward the shelter. I darted along a different route and hoped he wouldn't hear me moving through the forest ahead of him. When he walked through our door for the last time, I was back in my own uniform. I wondered if his felt as confining and uncomfortable as mine did. I knew it would be familiar again soon enough, and eventually welcome. But just then felt like a trap.

Later, minutes before Tuvok arrived, I claimed a need for solitude and went back to the river. I told myself it was because we didn't want to leave any trace of our presence behind. In truth a burst of sentimentality had sent me back to claim his shirt for my own. I wanted something, some part of him, some part of _us,_ that that I could keep. But it was gone, lost to the wind – or possibly our primate friend. I gathered up the rest of his clothes and dashed back to the shelter.

In my lonelier moments on _Voyager_ , I often wondered if he kept a memento from New Earth. I've never asked.

Six years removed from New Earth, eight months since _Voyager's_ return from the Delta Quadrant, I am sitting by the window in my childhood bedroom. Chakotay's vest from New Earth is spread across my lap like a blanket.

The sun is rising over the valley behind my Mother's house. It's the morning of Prixin, and it's almost unbearably bright. The wind howled for hours after midnight, and when I woke up before dawn and peeked through the curtains, I was astonished. Overnight the temperature had plunged and the wind changed, and southern Indiana is blanketed in snow – nearly twenty centimeters of it, the output of a rare November blizzard. Now the sun is rising in a clear, blue sky, glinting off snowdrifts and icicles. It's the first snow I've seen since we got back, and it's beautiful.

Chakotay's hotel room is on the side of the Union facing Beck Chapel. It must be very pretty this morning with the sun on the snow and the creek running beside the chapel. I wonder if he's up yet. I wonder if he's looked out his window.

I brush my fingertips across the vest. I dug it out of my closet after midnight last night. It was in the bottom of the one and only cargo container I haven't taken to San Francisco yet, the one packed full of memories I haven't been able to face, even after all these months.

Lyndsay Ballard's favorite book of poetry was in the container. Joe Carey's tin whistle. Mike Jonas's rank insignia and his friend Hogan's blue knit sweater. A scarf Jetal bought on shore leave. Pete Durst's pool cue. A data chip of Addie Kaplan's favorite music. Stadi's earring. Cavit's handwritten note of thanks for my faith in him, given to me on the day we left Deep Space Nine. Reminders of those we lost along the way, hidden from me but never forgotten, one memento for every soul left behind.

They are spread on the floor around me now, more than thirty of them.

When I got back to my Mother's house last night I unpacked the container for the first time. I held each precious object in my hand, spoke the name of the person each represented, and wept again for each and every loss.

It's the last step I had to take before I can finally leave the Delta Quadrant behind me. I had to face the decisions I made there, and the consequences of those decisions. I had to acknowledge the guilt that's been my shadow since I destroyed the Caretaker's array and stranded so many people so far away from their homes. I had to feel again the grief I felt for myself and for them, and especially for the lives lost, before I can step into a new life in the Alpha Quadrant.

At the bottom of the container, I knew I would find Chakotay's clothes from the last day we spent together on New Earth. When I packed them away, I thought they were just more reminders of everything I had lost on the journey and would never get back.

I understand now that they are symbols of something I gained along the way. But I couldn't acknowledge it until I worked through the losses.

I suspect the Starfleet counselors would be pleased with this epiphany.

In fact, it's probably what they were trying to tell me all along. Starting a new life after the Delta Quadrant entails much more than just accepting a promotion, moving into a new office, and starting new duties.

I have to embrace everything that happened to me, both good and bad, before I can truly go forward.

Last night, I think I finally did just that. I expressed the grief I kept inside every time we lost another friend. I faced the darkness and desperation that led to the _Equinox_ incident and the encounter with Kashyk. I let myself feel the hurt I hid when Chakotay left with Seven, and the confusion I suppressed during his long absence. I heard his words understood for the first time how much I hurt him over the years, and how far-reaching the consequences of my actions really were.

And I allowed myself to experience, finally, the depth of the bond I have felt for my former foe, First Officer and dearest friend almost from the moment we first met.

The vest is a little stiff now from disuse, but it still smells of grass and dirt and fresh air. There are even wood shavings clinging to it from some project or another. Maybe the boat he had planned to build. It would be typical of him to start the construction and make certain he was capable of the work before telling me of his plan. It's how he often handled personnel and staffing issues on _Voyager_ , and a thousand other little tasks I never knew about. He set solutions in motion before I ever knew there were problems.

“Just trying to make your job easier,” he would say when he told me of his actions.

The thought makes me smile.

A First Officer resolves issues behind the scenes in order to free the Captain's time. But only Chakotay would see his role in taking care of these things as a way of taking care of _me_.

I pull the vest closer around my legs.

The house is very quiet. Phoebe and Frank will be over soon with Eddie and Katie. All of us – Mom, Phoebe and her family and I – will go to the Union together for brunch and the all-day party and reunion. Mom will be up shortly I'm sure, probably baking something for brunch even though we've had the whole affair catered in. I dropped a hint yesterday that apple tarts might fit nicely with the food we ordered. While I watch the sun come up, I stay alert for the scents of cinnamon and coffee.

For now, though, I'm the only one up, and I'm enjoying the silence here in my childhood bedroom.

I slept more soundly last night than I have in months. Aunt Martha would say it's because my conscience is finally clear.

She would be right.

Last night Chakotay and I really talked for the first time in years, and about topics we carefully avoided on _Voyager_. It's clear that I have his friendship back. That's more important to me than anything else we might have together.

I had assumed that “anything else” was out of the question now. I thought we had waited too long. I thought there was too much hurt between us, too many misunderstandings and far too much to forgive.

But Chakotay's ability to keep his mind open to possibilities has always been something I admired about him.

His stories of us together in the multiverse were...enchanting.

When I asked him if all versions of us were together and happy, I expected him to nod and try to persuade me that we should be, too. But he didn't. He gave me an answer that shocked me and cut him to the bone.

As always, he put the matter back in my hands. In his own roundabout way he was letting me know that he'd be happy with whatever I could give him.

And I realized...I'm finally prepared to give him almost anything he asks for.

There's still something missing, some intangible quality that we used to have between us but lost along the way. I went to sleep last night desperate to figure out what it was. But I woke up this morning more clearheaded and resolute than I thought possible. We'll find what we lost. Maybe not soon, and maybe it'll take more hard conversations to discover it. But we will. I'm confident of that now. We just have to be patient with each other, and with ourselves.

I feel like I came to this awareness just in time.

The sound of Mom's coffee pot drifts up the staircase. I carefully repack the cargo container, then dash through the shower, dress and head downstairs.

The kitchen is warm and bright and smells of cinnamon and apples. Mom is sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand. She pushes an empty cup across the table to me. “Good morning,” she says. “You got in late, didn't you?”

I pour myself a cup of coffee. “I'm forty-five years old, Mom. If I want to wander in at midnight, I will.”

She gives a disapproving little hum. “Phoebe and I didn't expect you to come home at all.”

“Oh?”

“Given that you were going to see Chakotay.”

“Mom...”

She smirks at me over the rim over coffee mug. “You've been talking about him for days.”

I feign surprise. “Have I?”

My Mother rolls her eyes at me. Ah. So that's where I get it from. “Did you see him?”

“He was the only one still up. We went for a walk.”

“'A walk?' Is that what they call it now?”

“MOTHER!” I nearly drop my coffee.

She laughs at me. “Did you talk?”

I cradle the mug in both hands as a precaution for the next scandalous remark. “Yes. We walked down to the Well House and cleared the air.”

Her smirk is back. “The Well House. IU's central location for...do they still call it 'making out'?”

“Not for about a hundred years, Mom. And we didn't. So don't ask.”

She laughs and shakes her head at me.

She's still chuckling to herself when Phoebe and her family tumble in from the porch. Phoebe and Frank begin the rite of unwrapping the kids from their parkas and boots and scarves, something I can remember from my own childhood. It doesn't snow here often, but when it does, it does so with a vengeance.

“What's so funny?” Phoebe asks. “What did I miss?”

Mom pours two more cups of coffee. “Kathryn took Chakotay to the Well House last night.”

Phoebe grins at me. “Really?”

“Nothing happened,” I repeat. “We just talked.”

“Talked,” Phoebe says. I expect her to tease me about it, but she surprises me. “That's good, Kathryn. A few months ago you acted like you didn't want him anywhere near you, even though you claimed he was your best friend.” She sits down and sips her coffee. “It sounds like you've made a first step back to what you had before.”

“I think we have. I hope we have.” I sigh. “I feel like we have one chance to get this perfect.”

Mom and Phoebe and Frank all take a long, hard look at me. Frank, with baby Eddie on his knee, is the first to speak up. I don't know my brother-in-law as well as I'd like to, but he does possess a straightforward honesty that reminds me of my Father. It's probably the quality that allows him to survive a family of Janeways day in and day out. “It won't be perfect, Kathryn. No relationship ever is. Don't set yourself up for failure before you even get started, just because your expectations are too high.”

Phoebe nods. “It'll be work, Kathryn. A lot of work and sacrifice.”

Mom chimes in, her eyes narrowed at me. “And compromise.”

I look at all their serious, earnest faces...and I laugh. “Seven years in the Delta Quadrant,” I remind them. “Seven _years_. It was far from perfect. And work and sacrifice are two things that Chakotay and I excel at, I can assure you.” I take my Mother's hand across the table. “I know I'm not always good at compromise. But he'll keep me honest. And I'm committed to making our relationship, whatever it turns out to be, work for both of us.”

They all nod back at me. I squeeze my Mother's hand. I'm seized by an overwhelming urge to express more of the emotions I've suppressed for so long. “I love you all. You know that, don't you? I realized out there how important family is to me, and how vital it is to tell the people you love that you love them. Because tomorrow, any of us might be gone.”

There are tears all around the table, but before things get too maudlin the comm system beeps. It's Harry. He's outside somewhere, wearing a Starfleet-issue parka and a bright red knit cap that could only have been made by his mother. He's speaking into a PADD. “Admiral!” He says. “We all got up early to enjoy the snow before brunch. You should come!”

“Where are you?”

Harry squints at the PADD. “I think Chakotay said it was...Woodburn Field?”

I grin. “Woodlawn Field.”

Harry nods and smiles. “That's it. Woodlawn Field.”

Tom leans into the frame. He's wearing an identical green cap. I have a feeling Mrs. Kim has been busy. “Chakotay said to tell you he's sorry it's too snowy to show off his lacrosse skills for you, but he'll have your coffee ready.” Tom smirks. “We've all assumed this is a coded message. Is there something we should know about, Admiral?”

I roll my eyes at them both.

We all begin the ritual of re-wrapping the kids and ourselves in boots and coats. My snow gear is back in San Francisco. In my room I push aside the box of childhood mementos I packed months ago, reach into the closet and pull out a very old Starfleet-issue parka and boots. I haven't worn these since I was a Cadet. The parka still fits, but the old boots feel like lead weights on my feet.

Phoebe has followed me up the stairs. When I turn around she's leaning against my doorway. “You talked,” she says, and the words have a definite tone of disbelief.

“Just talked,” I say firmly. “Nothing more.”

“No decisions? No plans?”

“No. It was really a very open-ended discussion. We needed to get a few things out of the way before today.”

“Why?”

I sit down on the edge of my bed. “Because there's always someone watching, Phoebe. Always.”

“That had to be exhausting.”

“It is.” I fold my hands on my lap. “Even when we disagree, we have to find a way to keep it from the crew. Even when we're not united, we have to at least appear that way for their sakes.”

“Had to,” she says.

My head snaps up. “What?”

She shrugs. “You're speaking in present tense. You _have_ to seem like you agree, you _have_ to appear united. But you don't anymore. That's in the past now.”

“I don't think I understand the difference.”

She sits down next to me. “Kathryn, if you're going to make this work, you have to put the past _in_ the past. That means the days of disguising your feelings from each other in order to keep up appearances are over. It's time now to figure out what you both really want. If you want the same things, that's wonderful. If not... Well, it's not so wonderful, but it's honest. I think you haven't been honest with each other or with yourselves in the entire time you've known each other. But now you can be. It sounds like you made a good start last night. Build on that. You have plenty of time on your hands now. And stop worrying about what other people think. Especially the crew that loves you both.”

I gaze at my little sister for a long, quiet moment. “When did you get so wise, Phoebe?”

She shrugs. “You've been gone a long time. Things changed.” She jumps up from the bed. “Let's go. He's probably wondering where the hell you are by now.”

In half an hour we are marching down 10th Street and through the Arboretum. The trees, all covered with new snow, glisten in the bright sunlight. Before I can see anyone, I recognize the familiar voices of my crew, each with its particular rhythm and tone. I pause and listen to them. Even at this distance, I recognize the distinctiveness of each voice, the depth and richness of each personality. I can hear how happy they are to be together again, playing in the snow on Woodlawn Field.

Mom spies Tom and B'Elanna and starts passing out warm apple tarts. Katie runs through the snow to Tuvok's family and her new friend T'Meni. Harry and Libby are standing quietly near the Arboretum pond with Seven and the Doc – Joe. They're all here, and many more besides. Naomi and Sam and her husband. Mike and his boys. Chell and Ken and Ken's wife. Hoke and his family. Philicia and Sue. Everybody is wearing a new knit cap. Even Joe and Tuvok. I can't help but smile.

I adore these people. Just adore them.

Phoebe gives me a nudge. “He's over there,” she says with a toss of her head. I follow her gaze, and there's Chakotay on the other side of the field with his family: His sister Sekaya (light brown cap), a tall, broad-shouldered man who must be her husband Koham (dark green), and a little girl and boy (pink and blue, of course). Chakotay's got his dark brown cap pulled low on his ears. He hates to be cold. A wave of affection comes over me with this thought.

I adore him, too.

Phoebe nudges me again and I'm off, lurching through the snowdrifts in my heavy old boots. I must be a graceless sight indeed.

He sees me coming and smiles. He rummages in a knapsack, pulls out a thermal carafe and starts toward me.

As I'm stumbling through the snow, I'm very conscious of all the eyes on us. As far as most of these people know, this is the first time Chakotay and I have seen each other in eight months. He seems to recognize this too. His eyes are full of mischief when he leans down to murmur in my ear. “They're watching you.”

I walk right up to him, and just as I did last night I pull him down to me and plant a kiss on his cheek. He gasps and tries to straighten, but I hold his head close to mine. I know he's still unsure about me, about us. It's time to make my intentions completely plain. I brush my lips over his ear and he gasps again. “Now they're watching you,” I whisper.

He pulls back and stares at me, then laughs with delight. “Would you like me to try to throw them off?” he asks. “Should I faint? Fake a heart attack? Call for Security?”

I reach up again and brush my fingertips across his cheek. “How about we just let them wonder?” He smiles and presses his face into my hand. The dark circles under his eyes are gone. So is the uncertainty in them. “You look more rested,” I say.

“I slept better last night than I have in months. Probably better than I had any right to.”

“I had the same thought when I woke up. Benefit of a clear conscience, my Aunt Martha would say.”

He nods. “I'm glad we got a chance to talk last night. I think it helped.”

“I think so, too. I just have one more question for you.” He goes serious and still. “Where's my coffee?”

He laughs again and presses the carafe into my hands just as something small smashes into the backs of his knees, nearly knocking him down. “Paka!” Chakotay exclaims. He picks the boy up and says a few words in a language I can't understand, and then adds, “Be gentle.”

The boy has a round face and deep brown eyes. Dark hair peeks out from under his blue knit cap. “This is your nephew?” I ask.

Chakotay nods proudly. “This is Paka. He's three.” He kisses the boy's face; Paka squeals and pushes him away. “He's also very naughty sometimes.”

“Aren't all little boys?”

“I wasn't.”

I laugh long and hard. “I don't believe you for a second, Chakotay.” I reach out and touch the boy's ruddy cheeks. “He's gorgeous.”

Paka stares at me. He also says something I can't understand. Chakotay chuckles and repeats the phrase, then, “Blue,” he says. “She has blue eyes.”

“Blue,” Paka repeats. “Blue eyes.” He cocks his head to one side. “Pretty,” he says hesitantly.

Chakotay's grin widens. “Yes,” he says, “they are very pretty.”

I feel myself blush under both their gazes. “He doesn't speak Standard?”

“Not much. It's our way to speak our language with the children when they're small, and then Standard when they're a little older. It makes them more careful with words.”

Paka holds his hands out to me in the universal gesture of “please hold me.” Before I can react, Chakotay leans over and dumps him into my arms, easing the carafe from my hands in the same move.

The boy buries his face in my hair. “Pretty,” he breathes.

“Your nephew's a flirt, Chakotay.”

He grins. “Aren't all little boys?”

I give him a disapproving look. “I'm sure you were, at least.”

“He just likes you.”

The boy is clinging to my neck so tightly I feel a little choked. “I sense that.”

A small hand touches mine. A little girl is looking up at me with an expression I have seen many times before: Soft, knowing eyes set in a solemn face.

“Uncle keeps your picture beside his bed,” she says quietly.

I raise an eyebrow at Chakotay. “Does he, now?”

She nods. “He has told us stories of you.”

“Good stories, I hope.”

She nods again and smiles. “Yes,” she says. “Very good stories.”

Chakotay shuffles his feet in the snow. “This is Calusa,” he says. “My niece.”

I shift Paka to my hip and touch Calusa's long braid with my fingertips. “It's very nice to finally meet you, Calusa,” I say. “I'm Kathryn.”

Sekaya and Koham draw close to Chakotay, who introduces me to them. Koham takes Paka from my arms. “Your children are beautiful,” I say to them both.

“Thank you,” Koham says simply.

“And thank you for bringing my brother home,” Sekaya says. She eyes me speculatively for a moment, then, to my surprise, she draws me into a warm embrace. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

I hold her at arm's length. “I think you have that backwards, Sekaya. He took care of me.”

She lowers her chin in a gesture that is hauntingly, achingly familiar to me, and smiles. “Maybe. But now you will take care of each other.”

“I...yes.” I glance uncertainly up at Chakotay, whose eyes are very bright. “Yes. Now we will take care of each other.” The words have the welcome weight of a vow.

Before I can think any further about that, my family closes in around us. I introduce Mom and Phoebe and Frank to Chakotay, who seems unnerved by all the attention, until Mom presses an apple tart into his hands. “Kathryn says you have quite the sweet tooth,” she says with a smile. “You'll fit right in.”

He grins and downs the tart in three quick bites.

My niece Katie steps right up to Calusa. “I like your name,” she says. “And your pretty braid.”

Calusa peeks up at Sekaya, who nods in encouragement. “Thank you,” Calusa says.

“Want to make a snowman with T'Meni and me?”

Calusa cocks her head to one side. “I don't know how.”

“I'll show you.” Katie holds out her hand. “Friends?” she asks.

Calusa hesitates for only a second before she takes the offered hand and smiles. “Cousins,” she says, and the girls bound off into the snow, leaving us all smiling in their wake.

Chakotay hands me the carafe again. “They make it seem so easy,” he says.

Sekaya pats him on the back. “It _is_ easy, Chakotay,” she says, “if you let it be.” She slips her arm into Phoebe's on one side and my Mother's on the other. “Let us leave them alone,” she says, and steers my entire family away from Chakotay and me. Frank and Koham follow along with Eddie and Paka. As he passes by, Koham turns and winks at us both.

“Well,” I say, watching them go. “If that's not a hint, I don't know what is.”

Chakotay clears his throat. “My family is...blunt,” he says.

“But insightful. Just like you.” I take a long sip of the hot coffee. “I counted on that out there. I'll count on it here, too.”

“Then I will do my best to oblige.”

“I'm sure you will.” I take his arm. “Shall we make the rounds, Captain?”

We make our way slowly around the field. We find Tuvok and Hoke birdwatching in the Arboretum with Hoke's grandkids and Chell. Mike's boys are chatting with Tom about piloting various types of shuttlecraft; he shoos us away before Chakotay can give them any bad advice. Chakotay grumbles about that, but it's tempered by his sheepish grin.

Near the Arboretum pond, the Doc – Joe – and Seven are examining ice crystals with Naomi and Icheb. When we check in on the progress of the snowman, now under B'Elanna and Harry's direction, Harry pulls a sky-blue knit beret from his pocket.

“Mom made this for you, Admiral,” he says.

“She's here?” I ask. “I'd love to chat with her again.”

Harry blushes furiously. “She and Dad are back at the hotel. They'll be there for brunch.”

“I can't wait to see them.” I pull on the beret, which fits perfectly. “What do you think?”

B'Elanna nods. “It suits you,” she says.

“It matches your eyes, Kathryn,” Chakotay says, and Harry blushes even harder.

“I'd better get back to the snowman,” he stammers. “Oh, I almost forgot!” He reaches into his pocket and hands me a PADD. “Messages from Neelix came in just after we called you this morning. There's one for you and Captain Chakotay.”

Chakotay and I head back toward the relative shade of the Arboretum to watch the message. Along the way we pass more knots of people playing happily in the snow – adults and children, senior and junior officers, Maquis and Starfleet, all talking and laughing together. An idea begins to form in the back of my mind, but I set aside when we reach the the shade of a stately old pine tree.

Chakotay activates the PADD. Neelix's dear, sweet face appears, and tears fill my eyes.

“ _Greetings, Admiral, Captain,”_ he begins.

“ _I think I've timed these messages correctly so that they'll arrive on the morning of Prixin. Tom Paris told me in his last message that there's a celebration planned. I dearly wish I could be there to see all of you on this day. I miss you all so much._

“ _But Dexa and Brax and I have planned our own celebration here, of course, and while it won't be quite the same as the parties we used to have on_ Voyager _, I'll cherish it no less. Because Dexa and Brax...they're my family now, too. And that's why I wanted to send the two of you this Prixin message.”_

He hesitates, gathering himself, and then continues.

“ _I wanted to thank you both. For taking Kes and me in when we had nowhere else to turn, and for placing so much faith and trust in us. When I came to_ Voyager _, I was...cynical. Maybe even a little angry. All I really wanted to do was protect Kes. I resented it at first, every time you made a decision to investigate a nebula or approach an anomaly, Admiral. I thought you were putting us all in too much danger._

“ _But I came to realize that you, all of you, had a sense of wonder that I had lost somewhere along the way. You were curious about the Universe and how it worked, where I was just trying to survive and keep Kes safe. You taught me that there's more to life than just clawing out an everyday existence. So I thank you for that, Admiral. From the bottom of my heart.”_

There are tears on my face now, but I ignore them.

“ _And Captain Chakotay...you taught me a very valuable lesson a long time ago, but I didn't understand how valuable until just recently. You told me that while loving makes us vulnerable, what you get back when you love someone is always greater than what you risk. At the time I wasn't ready to hear those words. But when I met Dexa and Brax and had a decision to make about my future, those words came back to me just when I needed them. I took a risk that I might not have otherwise taken. And you were right. What I've gotten back is far greater than what I risked, and far better than I could have imagined._

“ _So I thank you, Kathryn and Chakotay. For everything you taught me. My life is so much richer, so joyful, for having met you both, and I'm proud to call you both 'family.' I love you both. Take care of yourselves, and of each other. Have a beautiful Prixin. Neelix out.”_

The PADD goes dark.

For a long moment, I can't speak. Chakotay eases the PADD from my shaking fingers and slips it in his pocket. I can't look at him, not yet, but the emotions passing between us are so intense I think for an instant that I could hold them in my hand, if I just reached out and grasped them.

I look out across the field at the joy-filled faces of my crew.

This is it.

This is what we lost in the Delta Quadrant, this awareness that the connections between us, the bonds of friendship and love that we forged there, are more important and stronger than anything that kept us apart. Our crew knew this, almost instinctively. Chakotay and I must have known it once, too. I remember feeling glimmers of it when he introduced me to my spirit guide, when he teased me about hustling the crew at pool, when he told me I had plenty of time to think things over after my letter from Mark.

It comes over me like a wave, this sudden, sure knowledge that the Universe is huge and wonder-filled, but that the most precious wonders of all are the thrum of hearts beating in time, the sound of another voice, the warmth of a smile that says, “I'm so glad we found each other. I'm happy to be here with you.”

I know why the sun seemed brighter this morning. It's because I woke up knowing deep in my bones that I am loved, that I love.

“This is what we lost,” I say. “This joy. This sense of wonder.”

He nods. “When every day was a struggle just to stay alive, we forgot that _being_ alive is a gift.” He looks down at me with eyes so soft and so dark, I could lose myself in them forever. “And being alive together...” he says.

“Is a miracle,” I finish the thought for him.

“If this is what we lost,” he says, turning to face me fully, “then I think we just got it back.”

I place my hand on his chest. Even through his parka, I can feel the beating of his strong heart. “It's so improbable that we found each other there.”

“But we did.” He takes my hand in his. “We did, Kathryn.”

“The Universe played a merry trick on us when it stranded us out there.”

He touches my hair. “What's that?”

I press my cheek into his warm palm. “It took away everything and everyone we cared about, but it gave us someone to love.”

I will never forget the way his whole body stills, then curves towards me. In that moment, I know that he would surround me if he could, draw me into his arms and keep me there forever.

But before we take this last step toward each other, we both know there are a few details to work out.

“What do we do now?” he asks.

I can't help it; I laugh out loud. It's all too delightful, too perfect to keep to myself.

He tilts his head toward me. “Kathryn?”

“Don't worry, Chakotay. I have an idea.”

“I should have guessed.” He shakes his head. “As long as it doesn't involve me flying a shuttle, I'm in. Tell me what you have in mind.”

I squeeze his hand. “Take the ship,” I say. “Take _Voyager_.”

He frowns. “But --”

“I know. You don't want it. But hear me out.”

“I'm listening.”

I take a fortifying sip of my coffee. I haven't told anyone this, not even Tuvok. But now it's time. “When we got back and the Admiralty asked me what I wanted, aside from pardons for your crew and back pay and leave for all of us, I told them I wanted only one thing: _carte blanche_.”

He chuckles. “Is that all?”

I grin up at him. “I wanted to be able to write my own orders. My own ticket, for myself and for as many of you as I could. Whatever you wanted, if it was in my power to give it I would. I've been biding my time, trying to decide what I really wanted to do.”

The tilt of his head tells me he's intrigued. “Go on.”

“We'll take the ship together. All of us.” I turn him around to face the crew and families again. “Look at them, Chakotay. Tell me what you see.”

He gives his head a little shake. “What am I looking for?”

“What are they doing?” I spot Seven shaking snow from a tree nearby. “What's Seven doing?”

“She and...Joe...are talking to Icheb and Naomi and some of the other kids. I think Joe is catching snowflakes in his hands for them to look at. He must have figured out how to lower his temperature so they don't melt.”

I nod and look to another part of the field, where Tom is talking to the Ayala boys. His hands are in the air, moving in close flight formation. “Okay, tell me what Tom's doing.”

“He's still with Mike's sons. He must be talking about Nova Squadron.”

“Right.” I point to a distant knot of people. “Is that B'Elanna and Harry? What are they doing?”

“Looks like they're building an igloo with Calusa and Katie and T'Meni. B'Elanna's sketching out a diagram in the snow, and Harry's showing them how to pack the snow into blocks.”

“Right. How about Hoke and Tuvok and his son and...is that Chell? What are they doing?”

“I think they're looking at birds.”

“Good. Okay, now do you see --”

“Kathryn,” he says. I can hear the exasperation in his voice. “What is this all about?”

“Teaching and learning, Chakotay. We just saw lessons in meteorology and fractal geometry, the physics of flight, engineering and basic biology.”

He looks out at the field again. “Okay, I see that. But what does it mean?”

I turn him around to face me. “We'll take the ship back out together, with as many of our crew and their families as we can manage. But we'll make _Voyager_ a teaching ship. ”

He blinks. I can see his imagination at work, spinning out possibilities. “Cadets,” he says, his face brightening. “We could host trainee cruises. Command-track Cadets could learn to work with older subordinates. Engineering Cadets who need to learn to improvise with available resources can train with B'Elanna. Navigators who need pilot training can work with Tom. Ops, Tactics, Security...we'd have it all covered.”

I nod. “Families with kids can rotate on and off if they prefer, or they can live on the ship permanently. The refit's not finished yet. There's plenty of space for classrooms, nurseries...whatever we need.”

“ _Carte blanche_ ,” he says. “Do you think the Admiralty will allow it?”

I shrug. “I don't see why not. I asked for flexibility, and they agreed. It's worth a try, anyway.” I take his hand again. “And we stay in the Alpha Quadrant. We request low-risk missions as much as possible. Rescues and recoveries. High-interest science targets.”

“Supply runs to Dorvan.”

I give his hand a squeeze. I know I can't take him away from the family he loves, but he's already imagined a way to stay close to them. “I hadn't thought of that. That's perfect.” I take another sip of my coffee. “We'll be together, but without the constant worry about resources and safety and everything else, we might actually be able to enjoy each other.”

“It'll be the home we'll always want to go back to,” he murmurs. Then he frowns. “But you and I will be in the same chain of command again.”

I smile up at him. Finally, my opening for the _coup de grace_. “Not if one of us reports directly to the Academy.”

A slow, sly smirk spreads across his face. “This could work.”

I take a step closer to him. “We'll tell the crew tonight at the party and let them start thinking about it. I haven't talked to anyone yet, but if we go to HQ a few weeks with a plan and a roster, they'll be more likely to capitulate.”

Chakotay nods and looks out over the field. “Do you think they'll come?”

I shrug. “I think a lot of them will. Some of them still haven't settled on new positions here yet. Even if they only take a short tour on the ship, it'll buy them some more time to decide what they really want.”

“Tom and B'Elanna have their house now. They might not want to come.”

“Or they might rotate in and out. Six months in San Francisco, six on _Voyager_. Or whatever rotation works best for them. That's the beauty of it, Chakotay. Now we can consider what we _want_ first. Not just what we need to stay alive.”

He nods. “We'll have Miral, Icheb, maybe Naomi, Mike's boys if he wants to come along...groups of Cadets...” He looks down at me. “Will there be room for all those kids?”

“We'll look at the refit plans later. We don't need space to grow our own food anymore, or convert dilithium – although those would be worthy lessons to teach. We can work something out. Or improvise. We're good at that.”

He gives me a speculative look. “And how about the other six kids?”

I do a quick mental count. “Which six?”

“Our six,” he says softly.

Time stops around me.

I swallow hard.

He sees my hesitation and places a hand on my shoulder. “It's all right, Kathryn,” he says. “It was just a thought. As long as we're together, I can be happy being Uncle to Paka and Calusa.” He smiles for me. “And Katie and Eddie, Tom and B'Elanna's kids, Naomi and Icheb. All of them.”

Even though he's trying not to show it, it's impossible not to hear the disappointment in his voice. I don't want our life together to be defined by that disappointment.

Deep down I think I've always known that he wanted a family, and maybe even wanted it with me. And the fact that I'm even entertaining the thought of having children with Chakotay when I haven't so much as kissed the man ought to alarm me.

It doesn't.

It feels right. It feels like we've been headed here all along.

Time zips forward, and I can see them. Handsome and contrary boys, freckle-faced and brilliant girls.

I can see us, too, bringing them into the Universe, watching them grow, holding them tight and letting them go. Watching them bring their own children into the Universe. Growing old together. Not alone, not lonely.

For seven years, we did things my way. My parameters, my prerogatives, my plans.

It's his turn now. I know he'd be with me even without children...but if it's in my power to give him the family he craves, I will.

We are far from young, of course. But it can be done. And while I was never sure I wanted children with Justin or Mark...I can't imagine a life with Chakotay that doesn't include our children.

But _six_?

“How about two?” I say.

He is silent for so long I think he hasn't heard me. Then he smiles, and it's a look I will never forget for as long as I live. Joyful. Tender. Hopeful. And loving, so loving.

Then he grins down at me. “Four,” he counters. “Two sets of twins.”

I put a hand on my hip. “What is it with you and twins, Chakotay? Do multiple births run in your family and you've just never bothered to tell me?”

He gives me that mischievous smile, the one that promises all the delicious secrets of the cosmos, and puts his hands on my waist. His touch is firm and confident. There is no hesitation in him at all anymore, and his certainty takes my breath away. “Three,” he offers. “Enough to keep things interesting, but not too many to handle if they gang up on us.”

“'If'?'”

He laughs. “You think they'll gang up on us?”

“We couldn't even keep Tom and Harry in line. We don't stand a chance against children with our own combined DNA.”

“Good point. I'll remember to be on my guard.” He starts to pull me to him. It occurs to me simultaneously that there are probably people watching, and that I just don't care. I've waited too long for this. “Three,” he says again.

I raise my hand and caress his tattoo – something I've wanted to do for years. He closes his eyes. I brush my fingers across his high cheekbone, pull off his silly cap to stroke the graying hair at his temple, trace the line of his jaw and touch his lips. “Three,” I say. “But one set of twins.”

He chuckles. I feel it all the way to my toes. “Two pregnancies. Less time away from the center seat. Very smart.”

“Exactly.”

My body is flush against his now and I can feel the warmth of him even through our heavy parkas. He lowers his head. “Can we start them now?” he whispers, just before he finally closes the distance between us.

The kiss is everything I'd imagined, everything I'd wanted. Strong and sure, slow and passionate, infinite and exquisite. It promises a lifetime of loving, and it leaves me feeling both weak-kneed and powerfully strong. Because I know that with this man beside me, I can do anything. _We_ can do anything.

He breaks the kiss and tilts his head until his lips brush my ear. “I'm serious,” he says softly. “I have a room. Let's go.”

I wrap my arms around his neck as best I can without dumping the last of my coffee down the back of his coat. “Tempting,” I say. His lips capture my earlobe. I close my eyes. “Very tempting. If you think there's a way we can sneak back to the hotel for a few hours without all these people noticing, then by all means, Captain. Lead on.”

He pulls back. “Only a few hours?” he asks.

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

He shrugs. “A few weeks.”

“Hmmmm. I'm definitely going to need more coffee.”

He laughs and manages to pull me even closer to him. “I love you,” he says. “Do you know how much?”

“I suspected, but it's all becoming very clear to me now. And I love you, too.” I pull him down to me and attempt to kiss him senseless. He tastes like coffee and apples.

I'm just about to tell him that this was absolutely worth the wait and we couldn't have taken this step any sooner...when a snowball whizzes past us. My back straightens without my even thinking about it, but I don't let him go. Not yet. “They're watching, aren't they?”

He glances over the top of my head. “Oh, yes.”

“Who threw it?”

“I can't tell. Either Tom or Seven, I think.”

I bury my head in his chest. “Had to be Tom. Seven would have better aim.”

“Unless that was just a warning shot and the volley is coming.” He pauses. “Maybe you should get behind me.”

“Is that chivalry or chauvinism talking?”

He shrugs. “I'm just trying to protect the Mother of my sons.”

I look up at him again. “Sons?”

“Or daughters,” he concedes. “Or some of each. Three of each.”

“You're incorrigible.”

“I've been called worse. I'm sure I will be again.” He kisses me, harder this time. A display for the crew.

I'm in so much trouble.

More snowballs whip past us. “Now who is it?”

He cranes his neck, then clears his throat. If his arms weren't locked around me, he would probably pull on his earlobe. I'm going to ravish that earlobe later. “Harry, B'Elanna, Joe, Mike, Philicia, Sue, Sekaya, Phoebe, Icheb, Sam --”

I drop my head back onto his chest. “I hate them.”

“No, you don't.” He chuckles, a low, rolling rumble against my cheek.

“No, I don't.” It's true. I don't hate them. I love them. All of them. I love that this is the way we are going to be now. Off-duty, we'll be friends first, commanders and commanded second. The Admiralty won't like it. But they haven't liked a lot of what I've done for the last eight years. This is the relationship that works for us, and I'm committed to it.

Nevertheless, I would have liked to keep Chakotay and me under wraps for a little longer. Maybe I could crawl inside his coat and disappear for a while.

I bet it's very warm in there.

Chakotay laughs again. “Naomi just threw a snowball at Tom.”

“Did she get him?”

“Right in the face.”

“Good for her.”

He pauses. “Now she's pointing at us and yelling at him.”

“What's she saying?”

“I can't hear. But she's got her hands on her hips and... Kathryn, she looks exactly like you.” He gives his head a little shake. “I think she's trying to get them to leave us alone.”

“I've taught her well.”

“Now they're all moving apart.” His eyes widen. “They're taking sides.”

“Let's be on Tuvok's side. He never has enough allies.”

“I don't even see Tuvok.” He glances around, then laughs. “Kathryn, Tuvok's got the babies. Look.”

He turns me around and points, and sure enough, there's Tuvok standing far away from the fray. He's holding my nephew Eddie in his arms. Paka is leaning against his knees. T'Pel is beside him with Miral. Hoke has his own youngest granddaughter, and my Mother is holding a small child I don't even recognize. She catches me looking and gives me a wicked grin. I roll my eyes at her.

The field erupts with flying snowballs. The warm sound of laughter echoes off the buildings that surround the field.

I stand and watch them for a long moment, these people I have worked and played with, who have become so dear to me over the years. I think again of the ones we lost along the way – Pete Durst, Lyndsay Ballard, Joe Carey. All of them. I wish they were still here. My heart swells with longing for them, and with love for these people in front of me, young and old, all still together in spite of everything we've been through. Maybe _because_ of everything we've been through.

But now they're here by choice, not out of necessity or chance. The guilt I've always felt at stranding them in the Delta Quadrant leaves me entirely. I will always mourn for what and who we lost, but I will no longer feel ashamed to acknowledge everything we gained.

The march of time is relentless. The only thing that makes our brief existence worthwhile is love.

“We really are family,” I whisper. “Aren't we?”

Chakotay pulls me close to his side. “We always were, Kathryn.”

I put my arm around his waist. “We could probably slip over to the hotel while they're occupied...” I begin.

“But we'd miss all this fun. And that huge bed will still be there after the party.”

I turn to him and nod. His eyes are bright with love and desire. I'm sure mine are, too. “After the party,” I echo.

He lets me go and snaps to attention. “Your orders, Admiral?” I raise my eyebrows at him. He nods toward the happy free-for-all. “Whose side are we on?”

“Your choice, Captain.”

“Hmmmm. I think Naomi's side. She showed real officer thinking a minute ago.”

“And she hit Tom in the face with a snowball.”

“Earning her my loyalty for life.”

I prepare to run into the melee. “Are you with me, Chakotay?”

I wait for his customary response, but it doesn't come. This worries me. I turn to look at him.

He's standing very still. “Forever, Kathryn,” he says.

And I realize that for all these years, this is the answer I've been waiting to hear from him.

I want to tell him this, but for a moment I can't speak.

He frowns. “Kathryn? Are you all right?”

I nod. “I am,” I say slowly, the realization coming with the words. “I am all right now.” I take his hands in mine. “And this, Chakotay? This is going to be all right, too, isn't it?”

“All right? No.” He grins. “This will never just be 'all right.' It'll be confusing and difficult and messy and terrifying.” He squeezes my hands. “But it'll also be joyous and wonder-filled and surprising and transcendent. It'll never be perfect. But it'll be perfectly us, and that's all we need.”

“Are we ready?”

“I think we are.”

I pull him down and kiss him again. “It's about time,” I say, and we rush onto the field side by side.

While I am flinging snowballs, running and ducking, diving for cover and laughing, the words of the Prixin blessing keep running through my head. “We do not stand alone. We are in the arms of family. We gather this day to extol the warmth and joy of those unshakeable bonds. Without them we could not call ourselves complete. On this day we are thankful to be together. We do not stand alone.”

We do not stand alone.

 _I_ do not stand alone. I finally understand that I never did.

And now, I never will.

 _Someday when we tell you the story, Katoha, we'll end with these words:_ Time is a rare and precious gift. Savor it. Use it wisely. Fill it with meaningful work that nurtures your soul and delightful play that makes you happy. Honor your roots, but make your own traditions. Question everything. Do what you know to be right, especially if it's hard. Tell the people who bring you joy that you love them. And never, ever lose your sense of wonder.

_But you'll be asleep by then, snuggled into your Grandfather's side._

_He will look at me, your beloved Shinli, with soft eyes set in a face that's lined with love and laughter, but no less handsome than the day we first met._

“ _I love that story,” he'll whisper. “I never tire of hearing it.”_

“ _Or of telling it,” I will respond, “especially the night before Prixin.” Then I will rise and hold my hand out to him. “Come on, Old Man. Bed.”_

_He will take my hand, his eyes full of mischief again. “It's still early, Kathryn. How about a soak in the hot tub first?”_

“ _In the middle of November? It's freezing out there!”_

_He will give me a wicked grin. “Think how good all that hot, hot water will feel.”_

_I will roll my eyes at him. “You know where that will lead, Chakotay. And Igasho and Sarah will be here soon with their kids.”_

_He will shrug. “He's our firstborn, Kathryn. It's not like he hasn't caught us in every conceivable compromising position. Including the one in which he was conceived, if I remember right.”_

_I will groan out loud. “You're incorrigible,” I will say. “You always were.”_

“ _I've been called worse,” he will say. He will pull me along behind him toward the backyard, shedding his clothes as he goes. “To the tub, Wife,” he will order. “Are you with me?”_

“ _Forever,” I will reply._

_As we make our way through the house, I will touch many glass vases filled with small stones._

_Someday when I tell the story, I will end with these words:_ We had never had so much time on our hands.

I am grateful that we learned to cherish every moment of it.

-END Part 11-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	12. Loving

Time On My Hands 12  
“Loving”

The rest of their story unfolds as if it were already written.

Over the years he will argue that it _was_ already written, that the cosmic Maker spoke their story to the stars on the day the Universe came to be. They had only to be still and listen to the words.

She will counter with a statement in favor of free will, of conscious choices made and adhered to, of the randomness of life and the relentlessness of time.

In the end, she will concede to a certain amount of destiny in their meeting, and he will acknowledge the decisions they made after that meeting. Coming together was an act of fate, but staying together was an act of will. They will agree to disagree.

It's an argument they will have many times in a long life together, softened by the fact that they will usually have it in bed.

In fact, it's where they will have their best, most productive conversations: Tangled in the sheets, listening to the hum of the ship's engines or the night sounds of the planet around them. They will even have these wide-ranging philosophical discussions huddled in a tent in southern Indiana's Deam Wilderness, cozy and warm in a happy pile of blankets and children and dogs.

Wherever they go along their journey, they will carve out a sanctuary just for the two of them where they can talk and laugh and sometimes cry together. They will discuss ship's business lying in bed. They will express pride in the Paris childrens' entry into the Academy. They will coax each other through disappointments and commemorate each others' accomplishments. They will nurse each other through illness, and once, after a horrific shuttle crash, she will sit with him for days while he lies unresponsive – and she will laugh when he finally opens one eye and says, without preamble, “It wasn't my fault.”

They will talk through his rage when the Cardassians violate their peace accord and threaten the Federation again, putting his family in danger.

They will mourn the death of her Mother.

They will worry about Tuvok's declining health.

They will celebrate the births of their children and grandchildren – and weep for the one lost to them.

Throughout the years, throughout the triumphs and the tragedies, the arguments and the celebrations, they will find that there is one place in which they can truly be honest with each other, where hurts fall away and only love remains. Even when the discussions are hard, if they can only find a quiet space to be alone together, to wrap themselves around each other in soft darkness, the talking comes easily and the words are never too harsh to bear.

But on this night...this first night...there are no words at all.

After the party, after the crew have dispersed and the little ones have showered them with good-night kisses, they find themselves face-to-face in his room.

She starts to speak, but he stops her lips with his own. He feels they are beyond talking now, and after a few more thwarted attempts at conversation, she silently concedes his point.

He leads her to the window, where they stand side-by-side and watch darkness descend on this joyous, wonder-filled day. When the last rays of the setting sun fade and disappear, a warm light glows from the stained-glass windows of Beck Chapel. The little patches of muted color cast on the fresh snow remind him of the stones in the vase on New Earth. He brushes his fingers across the windowpane.

She catches his hand in her own and kisses his fingertips, then his palm. She has always loved his hands, his strong, capable hands – but never more than today when they pulled her close to him with such breathtaking confidence.

In a few minutes, she will revise that opinion and decide she has never loved his hands more than when she trembles under them for the first time.

She'll revise it again in a year when she watches those hands soothe a tearful infant to sleep.

For now, though, she loves the way his hands move through her hair and then come to rest at the nape of her neck. He kisses her again, cradling her head in his palms, and she feels as though her entire being, her very soul, rests in his hands. When he lowers his fingertips to her shoulders, she misses that feeling of safe harbor, of refuge...until his hands slide to her collar, moving it aside.

A few decades from now, in an instant of spirit-crushing grief, he will try to remember what she was wearing at this moment, the texture of the fabric, the sound of it sliding from her body. He will weep when he realizes he has forgotten.

But he will always remember with absolute clarity the glow of her skin in the gathering darkness, and her shudder of pleasure when he touches her for the first time.

The thin, strong line of her collarbone is salty against his tongue, the scent of her desire musky and intoxicating.

He steps away from her and wills himself to slow down. It's taken them almost eight years to get to this moment, and he is desperate to make it last.

When she yanks his sweater over his head and reaches for his trousers, he acknowledges another kind of desperation entirely. He grins when he sees the determination on her face and stills her hands with his own. She looks up and catches his cheerful expression. She hesitates for a second, startled, then gives him a lopsided smile, nods and surrenders.

They tumble together into the gigantic bed that intimidated him and amused her just a few hours ago. She's pleased to find that the mattress is soft and the sheets smooth and inviting, the antique wooden frame sturdy enough to accommodate their play.

And it is play. She's always thought their joining would be a mystical and transcendent moment, profound and wondrous. Soon enough it will be; she knows this deep in her bones, as if it has already happened. She's content to wait. Without exchanging a word, together they have decided to make this moment an extension of their laughter-filled day. Transcendence will come later.

There is a brief struggle for dominance.

He decides this is only right and puts up a halfhearted resistance. He allows her to move him to her bidding...but only until need overwhelms his obedience.

When he flips her to her back and covers her body with his own, he chuckles at her small sound of protest. He starts to tell her to give up, but he's the one who decreed that this moment should be silent. Instead he kisses her until she softens beneath him and snakes her arms around his body. Trailing kisses along her cheek, he presses his lips against her ear, then gives it a sloppy lick.

She squirms and laughs out loud.

So does he, when she tickles her fingertips along his ribs.

They come together in a freewheeling tangle of arms and legs, laughter and sighs.

She seizes his ear in her lips, fulfilling a fantasy she's harbored since the first time she saw him pull on it in confusion and uncertainty. His poor ear, so abused over the years. She nuzzles and soothes it and he growls in response.

He kisses her chin, her noble chin, recalling every time she raised it in defiance at a belligerent alien or a wayward lieutenant – or a contrary First Officer. He nibbles along her jawline until he reaches the base of her throat. He presses his nose against her neck and inhales deeply. Her scent is familiar and comforting.

She smooths her hands down his broad back and urges him closer.

He obeys.

Her eyes widen.

He smirks.

She frowns at him, then reaches up, pulls his head down and bites his ear. Not hard, just enough to make him groan and move against her with a bit more urgency.

Seven years of aligning themselves, seven years of being so attuned to each other that they know each others' thoughts and needs without words, come back to them both in a rush. They instinctively move to a comfortable fit, as if they've been lovers for years.

And she recognizes with a jolt that they have loved each other like this since the moment they first met. In spite of all the disagreements and struggles, in spite of all odds, they've never stopped.

The lightness of their first moments together falls away and she is overwhelmed by joy. She sees it on his face, too, when he pulls back to look at her, and is certain that they have regained the sense of wonder they thought they'd left behind forever.

They both slow and still, wrapped in each other and caught in this sudden revelation.

He curls into her and she rises to meet him, closing the careful distance they have kept between them for so long. In an instant of perfect insight, they both understand that they could never have had this moment without that distance. They had thought that they would need to make up for lost time, but realize that time was never lost to them.

Time was and is their ally, not the undefined and terrifying enemy they'd always assumed it to be. Every moment of those seven years, both the good and the bad, brought them here. The past takes on new shape and deeper meaning now. And the future holds rightness instead of uncertainty, hope instead of despair, freedom instead of restriction.

And love, so much love.

She allows the joy and wonder of it take her, clutching at her soul companion, her Chakotay.

He feels her ecstasy and loses himself to his spirit mate, his Kathryn.

Gasping, sighing, they remain intertwined even as their bodies soften, reveling in the moment. In times that they cannot be together, in moments to come of separation and longing, they will both recall this rightness, this choice made with conviction, this story already written.

When they are both relaxed again, he rolls to his side and fits her against him. She sighs and pulls the blanket over them. She rests her head on his chest and listens to the rhythm of his strong heart until it lulls her to sleep. He holds her, his face buried in her hair, until he succumbs to exhaustion.

They've never had so much time on their hands.

They will make the most of every moment together.

-END-


End file.
